How wonderful to spend a couple of hours talking about something that has nothing to do with: snow, cold, winter, shoveling, freezing, thermal coveralls. Tonight was the second class of the Bee Course, put on - for FREE - by a beekeeping club in Bennington, VT. The class is taught by two men who have a lot of beekeeping experience between them - almost 60 years. They are very nice, generous guys who are sharing everything they have learned through trial and error, so that we won't have to. Besides learning a lot of new things, I also am learning about everything I did wrong. Right now my bees are well-insulated - their hive is buried in show up to about 8 inches from the top - plenty of room for air to circulate, but I sure hope we don't get much more snow. M, M, L and I are going and will be forming a sort of chain of beekeepers - once the days warm up and bee runways are clear, we will start at M's and work our way down to L's bees, opening, switching hive boxes, and seeing what's been happening all winter. I'll be adding a hive this spring, so now to more fun catalog surfing - woodenware!
4 comments:
How lucky (and wise) you are to have your little group all work together on the bees. You'll have that support thing going and by working with and becoming familiar with hives other than your own, you'll learn/experience all the more. I think having other hives to compare yours to can only be beneficial. Plus you'll always have the others to bounce questions off of. Support! Yay, we all need more of it.
I am so jealous. They had a class here in the city -for city bee keepers- but I thought it would still be good. They wanted $300! Well no way on that. I love Vermont. I could see myself living there for sure.
Yay bees! Whenever the Master Gardeners participate in any of the community festivals around here I duck out and go hang with the Beekeepers' Association - when the MG's need me they always know where to go LOL - those guys are so much more interesting than our little plant doctor tent !
I agree with Erin -- yay bees! We'd like to add bees to the farm this year but there's a lot to learn. It's great that you've formed a beekeeping 'guild' of sorts. And yes, learning about bees sounds like the perfect antidote to the mid-February blahs!
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