It all begins with bees...

Last winter I participated in a bee course just to get an idea of the basics of how to keep bees. I had absolutely no prior experiences and my general impression was that bees took care of them self. Ah, not quite but ignorance is bliss.

Another "surprise" was the amount of equipment needed. I went shopping with my family and found that I could hardly have the beginners package in the car. In Denmark the typical size of a stacking box is 12"x10". I decided to use Hoffmann frames instead of frames with corner blocks and so far I think it works well for me - (but I do not have much knowledge for comparison....)

After a few evenings of collecting, gluing,  and generally getting familiar with the equipment it was time to pick up my first family. It was a small family of Buckfast bees bread in Denmark by Svend Sejr about 1500 individuals. The queen was new with a yellow mark.  Unfortunately I was on holiday the weekend it arrived, but fortunately I got my family to pick up the bees. With a little help from a bee keeper from the bee course, the bee family got safely positioned in our garden.

Throughout the summer I participated in the practical part of the bee course in the school bee farm and used the experience on my own hive shortly after. It was a great way to be sure that I did not do anything too foolish to my bees at home. From time to time my family also came but I must admit that they did not find the same enthusiasm in bee-keeping that I did, but the bees have at least been accepted as part of the garden.

So far it has been quite easy to deal with the bees. They have behaved like a text-book example. The few mishaps (which will be posted later) are solely due to my own screw-ups. Hopefully I have learned the lesson for next year......time will tell...

Starting from about 1500 bees the family grew quite large quick and since they have been placed in a garden area, there is always pollen and nectar available in abundance. Soon I could add both the second box for extending the family and the third box for honey collection. I did try the forth box also for honey, but it was a bit late in the summer, so it did not really pay off. In the end I had one full box (10 frames) almost fully covered with honey cells, and a few that I could "steal" from the second box which had not been used for breeding but just for storing honey.

Then it was time to extract the honey. A fellow beekeeper and I decided to do it the same day because you do need lots of equipment and plenty of water to clean it all afterwards. Being two just makes things easier.

First, each frame needs to be peeled.

Fill the loop and spin the frames carefully so that the honey comes off from both sides with breaking the wax

And collect the beautiful and very fragrant raw honey! :o)

All in all I ended up with about 25 kg of honey from the first year - enough for several batches of mead! And still there is all the honey we can eat, honey for presents and some that we can sell.

I am already thinking that perhaps we should have 2 hives........