Mr. 15 and the Bee Man have been busy all summer, caring for bees and expanding hives.
Smoking the bees
In fact, they expanded the hives so much that there is only enough honey for the bees this winter, with none to spare for us. That is a bit of a disappointment, but the Bee Man surprised us with a lovely candle, made from homegrown wax.
Beeswax candle
And, of course, the bees have also contributed to our very fruitful garden.
Melons from our garden
For more simple joys, visit Finer Things Friday.
So cool about the beehives! How long have you been keeping bees? Is it very time-consuming? What a beautiful candle!
This is the second year they are doing bees. It doesn’t seem to be very time consuming, but it does take a lot of thought. There are always new issues to think about and decide.
My son has learned a lot and enjoys the bees hugely.
I’ve become a lot more relaxed about them and now peacefully pick raspberries even while the whole patch is humming. Apparently bees stay relaxed if people do. Besides, the Bee Man and my son have gotten rid of the aggressive bees. It’s all very fascinating.
Annie Kate
I’ve been interested in beekeeping since I was a young girl – honey production is a mainstay of the farming community my dad grew up in, which sparked my interest. I LOVE honey. 😎 Recently it occurred to me that maybe I should research it a little and see if we could keep bees on our property. I really haven’t looked into it much, but your post reminded me that I wanted to do that. Hard to say if it will go any further than a little research, but I have to start somewhere!
You are an amazing family! Meat chickens, egg chickens, beehives, WOW! Your kids are learning so much about where food comes from, animal and insect care, etc. That is very neat. We have beekeepers down the road and occasionally buy honey from them.
The kids are amazing, Laraba! They learned these things on their own, basically. Certainly not from my husband and me!
Now our new project is to train two puppies, and it’s not going very well. I have to focus on telling the kids to do it; they’ve read the book, and I just do what they tell me to. LOL
Annie Kate
What a lovely candle! We just read a lovely book about bee keeping. My boys were quite fascinated. The best we can do here is to grow plants to encourage the bees to visit our garden.
(As a by the by, I have tried to leave comments a few times and been stopped by some fault in this new ‘ blog platform’. It seems to be working just now though. I am so hoping they’ve finally got it fixed!)
Sarah
I want to have a hive of bees. Have you heard of top-bar hives? I recently read about them in Urban Farm magazine. They sound easier to keep than the traditional box kind.