On Collecting Bee Swarms

 
-->
It was our anniversary. It was pouring down rain. We love rain on momentous days in our life. And I guess we love a little bit of crazy too. And that is just what we got.

We were hanging out on the front porch when we discovered that our bees had swarmed in a nearby tree. It was accessible, so George Googled how to catch a swarm of bees. It involved a gun, climbing a tall tree, a large white sheet, and some raincoats.

George climbed the tree, shot out the limb, which dropped on the first shot into the sheet I held below and immediately dumped into a nearby hive.  All in a downpour! We didn't get any pictures of that swarm for obvious reasons. Based on the crazy, redneck methods we have utilized in the reclamation of our bees, we've made sure to document our swarm catching procedures since then.

Whew, we got them.

The next day, they swarmed again. This time they were kind enough to land on a more accessible branch. It involved a truck, climbing a tree, clippers, and a hive. This time we collected them and they stayed.

A few months later, they swarmed again. They went to an even lower branch eliminating the need to climb a tree. We captured the swarm yet again.

This, of course means that we have been able to nearly double the amount of hives that we have and in the middle of it all, we harvested delicious honey.

We were swimming in the pool a few days ago. Amelia looked up and noticed a swarm high above our heads in the branches of a Live Oak. We kept swimming.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Love Them. Feed Them. Talk To Them. The Rest Is Icing On The Cake.

Image
We've been homeschooling for ten years. At LEAST once a week I think that homeschooling is the worst possible thing on the planet. I look at my kids and think, "I've got nothin'!" It is scary. It is hard. How many hundreds of times have I called my extremely patient husband and yelled, literally screamed into the phone, "I CAN'T DO THIS!" There was a day, in the middle of a lesson that wasn't going well at all, that I walked out the back door, walked to the pool, jumped in fully clothed and yelled as loud as I could under the water. I got back out of the pool, calmly walked inside, changed my clothes and continued with the day feeling much relieved. George, my husband and biggest cheerleader - also a major part of our homeschooling life, is diligent to walk me off the cliff of homeschool despair. When I feel like I am failing our children, he offers me this morsel... Before I give you his advice, I would like to mention at this poi...
Read more

Child's Play

Image
Amelia wanted to have a coffee shop party for her friends to celebrate her birthday. We planned it all week. We named the coffee shop, "Amaruma Coffee." George Wilder says it means, "Good Coffee". We made the logo. Of course it included a tree (Amelia draws trees constantly) and coffee beans. We made decisions about what to serve and how to serve it.  Then Amelia decided to make a castle. She found some bricks in the yard and started making a wall/castle. George Wilder was responsible for making the mortar from ash and water and dirt. They worked on the wall/castle for days. The coffee shop became the side show and the castle would be the center of play. They walked through exactly how the day would go all afternoon Thursday. It was nearly impossible to do any school work Friday. They looked longingly toward the castle/wall. There was work to do. It had to be finished and decorated and set up for extensive castle visiting. There were problems to be sol...
Read more

Wilderness Whines

Image
When the "but I want . . . " sirens wail and "just one more time. . . " voices ring in chorus, and the "when will we be there?" interrogations press hard against ear drum, we stop and talk about the power of wishing for something that isn't ours to have and how it is debilitating and hard and caused an entire nation to get stuck in a desert for 40 years and if they would have just seen past the "when will we get there" they might have enjoyed the journey and found glory waiting without so much turmoil. We are cuddled and there are lots of tears as I explain the weeding of the whine and how it must happen now. And suddenly I realize that perhaps I've been wandering around. Yes, I have. I am in a desert of whine. It is bedtime and we turn off the lights and pray for grace for the next day. The next day arrives quickly. I lace up and head out the door for a morning run and prayer. It comes to me as I put one foot in front of the...
Read more