Spring Gardening: Tips on Bees

Here at Laughing Dog Farm we are new bee keepers. We read some articles last year that indicate that there's a serious global crisis with the bees. And knowing how important bees are for pollination and permaculture gardening, we decided it was time that we ourselves got involved in this beautiful craft. So this is my wife Divya, and she's taking it upon herself to educate herself about bee keeping. And we, these bees came home yesterday, three days ago, and she deposited a live queen into each hive. And the queen's pheromones stimulate the bees to stick around and build the honey comb. And then once they've created a hive and become active they begin to produce brood. And then the brood build the hive to the point where they have the ability to sock away food. And the food that they sock away of course is in the form of honey. So we are hopeful and excited and a little nervous and Divya can't keep out of the field here. She's checking her bees everyday, filling up the food, the sugar water receptacle and in a couple of days we'll open it up and make sure that the queen is alive and that she's starting to lay eggs and produce brood. And hopefully next year we'll have our first crop of honey.