As you may or may not know, we set up our first beehive this past summer and it has been a joy to get to know the bees. The hive was started with one deep hive box and 10 frames and now has another deep box added. The hope is to add a medium size box very soon. We are very hopeful that all of this bulk will help ensure the success of this hive into the winter months by the bees of the hive creating lots of honey. Bees use honey as their energy source/food when the flowers and trees are no longer producing pollen and the more honey that they have stored, the more they have to eat and thus, hopefully, survive.
We use the traditional Langstroth hives which are the box type hives that you typically see in apiaries these days. They are easy to add to and easy to maintain. It also makes it easy to capture a wild swarm, or in the case of what we ran into the other day - an open air hive.
In its simplest definition, an open air hive is a beehive where the bees would have swarmed from a previous hive and, rather than build their nest inside an old tree trunk or other enclosed space, decided to build comb out in the open on a tree branch or other such structure.
Since we're so new to bees, this has been the first time we've been able to remove a wild caught hive and it was quite the adventure!
We're looking forward to installing this new hive in our bee yard very soon and feeding these bees to hopefully have them survive the winter. Stay up to date on all things bee related as well as knowing where and when our I.P.A. Bites (Incredible. Pupper. Appetizers.)® will be for sale by following us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/purpleshamrockfarm