First I just want to say, Hi Everyone!! Sorry to be absent for so long. Life sure happens, doesn’t it? We just have to do the best we can, and run with it. I’m so thankful for Leap Day because that allows me to at least get one blog post in for February. Yay!
Recently, the Blacksmith and I attended a wonderful beginning beekeeping workshop sponsored by the EPA and University of Missouri Extension. Our main speakers for the day were Jim and Valerie Duever of Jim 'n' I Farms. We both learned so much that our heads were spinning. Thank goodness for some fabulous learning materials, camera, and lots of notepads. It was an entire day of beekeeping information – loved it!!
Feral comb, inserted into a frame.
Did you know that rubberbands work great for holding in comb, should you capture a wild swarm? Me neither.
We also learned about some different feeding strategies (including pollen patties), and when to feed them.
A fabulous demo was given on how to set your new package bees up in their new home. It’s really not as scary as it sounds (I hope, because we’ll be doing this soon).
Darn, I wanted a more close-up picture of Valerie. She had on the cutest honeybee cardigan ever! Here she is demonstrating some beekeepers’ protective clothing options.
Everyone had hands on experience building a complete bee hive set.
Here, part of our group learns to put the frames together. We had all ages actively participating in this workshop.. which I thought was extremely cool. 
We also learned how to insert the Duragilt foundation into the frames we had built. (All was easy peasy, once we got the hang of it).
At the end of the day, our completed projected was given away as a door prize. How cool is that? (sorry, best picture I could get of it.. everyone was in for a close-up of our wonderful creation!)
Hopefully, all of this new information from the workshop will help us have healthier and happier bees,
and more of this.
In addition to this workshop and reading some great beekeeping books, over the past couple of months we’ve been watching some great ‘bee’ flicks from Netflix. I would highly recommend any of these for your continued bee education:
Queen of the Sun (update: you can preview, rent or buy this beautiful documentary via the player at the bottom of this page!)
Bees: Tales from the Hive: Nova
Vanishing of the Bees
Colony
Off to put some frames together! Happy Leap Day!!
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