This came up in a Google search today.*
https://gazette.mun.ca/campus-and-community/hidden-talents-3/
It’s an article where I mention that I get anywhere between 20-50 pounds of honey per hive in the beeyard next to my house in Flatrock. That’s about right for Flatrock.
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Here’s a photo of me working on what is probably the largest hive I’ve ever had to deal with since I began beekeeping in 2010. (I’ve created a special tag just for this hive, Giant Hive 2021, so everything I’ve written about it can be viewed in sequence.)
I just got back from scraping out dead bees and debris from the bottom of some of my beehives and it looked a little something like this:
Lots of talkin’, but here are the highlights:
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An unedited visit to my beeyard that happened 30 minutes ago after a big rain storm we had last night, just me yakking and explaining a few things as well as I can explain them:
My last words in the video are a reference to the 1979 film Alien that probably no one will get, as is usually the case for references I make. I’m cool with that.
I pulled this funny looking 5-pounder of comb honey from one of my hives yesterday. No humans or bees were harmed. The honey extractor known as a “Flow Hive” would deprive me of this experience. Beekeeping, for me, is about being close to the bees. Honey is the bonus.
The first swarm I ever experienced happened around this date in 2012. I haven’t had a colony come anywhere close to being this strong since. The extraordinarily robust colonies I was able to build up during my first few years of beekeeping may have been more the result of unusually warm and sunny weather than anything else. Beekeepers should give credit where credit is due, and let’s be honest: Most of the credit goes to the weather.
I attribute most of my success in beekeeping to good weather.
24 minutes of just sitting here listening to the snow fall and the wind blow and the birds doing birdy things and all that stillness. Why not?
The video was shot on my Samsung Galaxy S7 smartphone, so the audio isn’t exactly Hi-Fi, but I’ve cranked it up so all the natural sounds jump out a little more. It’s quiet for the most part, though.
I ate some honey that’s been frozen in my freezer since 2011. It tasted like summer.
Eating honey six years after it was bottled.
This sums up my approach to beekeeping:
Page 109 from William Wharton’s (Albert du Aime’s) novel, Last Lovers.
Beekeeping is living with the possibility of error. All the time.
