#lifewithbees

Life With Bees: The Comb Chronicles Well, it sure is quite the rollercoaster of emotions, caring for these sacred little creatures. But today's hive check-in seemed to yield positive results. Will share more later! . . . #happybees #backyardbees #backyardbeekeeping #ilovebees #beesarecool #beehive #hivemind #apiarist #buzz #pollinators #savethebees #fortheloveofbees #lifewithbees #combchronicles #madebynature #inspiration #insearchofthequeen

Breakfast with the bees #lifewithbees #pollinators🐝 #rurallife #saskatchewan (at Meacham, Saskatchewan) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0LvYnQHnlq/?igshid=1heqdq9ukq5lt

Snip, snip, snip.... #dartmouthmakers here we come! #lifewithbees #buylocal #madeinnovascotia #reusereducerecycle

The benefit of driving a #nissancube #beekeeping #willitfitinthecar #lifewithbees

Life with Bees: The Comb Chronicles • I never thought I could be more in love with these little pollinators! • We were happy when we checked on the bees before we went camping for the weekend, not only did they start to build new comb less wonky, there was new larvae (again, if you look really closely, you can see it here) in some of the other comb and they had capped some of the larvae in the fallen comb (hope they make it!). • Also, we think we found the queen! After such a stressful check-in previously, we were feeling a lot more relaxed and so were the bees. We also added some wood guidelines to the top of a few empty frames and used rubber bands to put the fallen come back on frames. • Lastly, I would like to take a moment to point out that beekeeping (in my humble opinion) is a very personal adventure. There is no one right way to do it and with that said, we are finding that listening to our instinct and to the bees energy is one of THE most important things you can do (obviously I'm not a seasoned beekeeper, but this I am 100% clear on). I am grateful for all of the encouragement and great suggestions. We will go back in to check again later this week. . . . #backyardbees #savethebees #lifewithbees #ilovebees #hivemind #combchronicles #toeachtheirown #pollinators #listentoyourgut #beesarepuremagic

Life with bees: the comb chronicles We have been worried that our new hive was queenless. Along with building slightly wonky, this has been a major concern. Yesterday morning, while checking the few frames that had comb started, we had a pleasant surprise- what we think may be a queen cell, but even more exciting, if you look reeeeeeally closely, are the little larvae in each cell! So we were buzzing (sorry, had to) with optimism! Just to make sure, we asked a friend, who has hives and is supposed to be really good at finding the queen, come to take a look for her... Unfortunately, she isn't used to foundationless frames and tipped it the wrong way. This frame was the biggest and actually had 2 combs going on it (because of the angle they were building). One dropped into the hive, really upsetting the bees and then a minute later the same thing happened. It all happened so fast. I was devastated. And I've never seen our bees so upset, understandably. I'm sure the larvae won't survive and hopefully we still have a queen. But I feel like we are pushing it... So we are going to let them settle for a couple of days and clean up the fallen comb. Meanwhile we are going to spiff up the frames with some guidelines to hopefully build straight. We are potentially going to try adding a couple frames with comb already on them, but I'm still wanting to go foundationless. This has been extra difficult because foundation is the typical practice, but they tend to have chemicals in them that we don't want in our hive. Many people that practice traditional beekeeping can get really judgmental about foundationless Beekeeping and it is hard to shirk that negativity. But we try. So, continue to cross your fingers that it all works out and we can get this hive thriving! . . . #beestories #backyardbees #beehive #hivemind #backyardbeekeeping #lifewithbees #combchronicles #savethebees #newbees #newbeekeeper #babybees #ilovebees #inspiredbynature #staypositive