Adventures in Beekeeping

It was a weekday, I was walking the perimeter of my parents property alone.

I often gloat about how lovely this land and house are and I was on a mission to capture it from every angle to share with my friends back in Colorado. I snapped the last picture and while I was checking it on my phone I spotted something in one of the cherry trees…

I couldn’t believe it – a swarm!

This was the third, maybe fourth, swarm in less than a week and I had only heard about the capture of the other swarms because I was not in New York at the time. I got closer, snapped some more pictures and sent them to my father, the beekeeper.

As soon he got home from work we geared up and started prepping.

And then we caught the swarm.

Not all the bees made it into the box right away. And unfortunately, as always, there were a few casualties.

We then moved over the check on the other hives, to try to figure out which hive the swarm came from.

This involved a (seemingly impossible) search for the queen.

We searched and searched. So many bees!

But we FINALLY found her 🙂

One of the boxes had nearly TEN queen cells, many hatched. No wonder there was an explosion of swarms!

Over an hour, and two bee stings, later I had learned two things.

First, bees don’t like black clothing – thanks for warning me after sting number two.

Second, I really want to keep bees.

-Lyndsy

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