Beehive growth

So happy to report that our bees are multiplying to the point that we had to get more supers to start another hive. Michael is building another bee box and this will make three!

Hive 1 is not flourishing as well as we would like. While we see larvae, we have yet located the actual queen. Hive 2 is full of honey, so extraction is soon.

Alex (age 10) got a full class on beekeeping while visiting Poppa and Mimi over the weekend. Alex is so much like her Poppa. She loves gardening, cooking, making things and now loves the bees. I think it is so wonderful that he has passed along those amazingly wonderful traits about him to his precious granddaughter.

Honey and summer

Honey and summer just go together. Everything gets a little stickier in the summer, as well as sweet. There are many benefits to honey. It oxygenates the blood, it is full of various vitamins and it just plain good.

My grandfather was a beekeeper. He was highly allergic to bees. So am I, along with my children. But I have always had this fascination with bees and their magic that they spin producing such sweet ends. Maybe because they were a little dangerous. Maybe because it is something I was told "no" to and wasn't supposed to get near. Why is it human nature to be drawn to the taboo?

Bumble bees are not even built to fly. The way they are made up should make it physically impossible to leave the ground. But they do. We can learn so much from tiny bees who are so determined. So this summer I celebrate honey and bees are all things sweet and impossible.