Beekeeping Demo

Well today I was supposed do a beekeeping presentation at a local arboretum followed by a movie. It was "The Bee Movie". I spent all of last week on vacation building and painting two deep boxes, building a NUC box and the hightlight of my presentation, building an observation hive with live bees !

I finished the observation hive on Thurs morning July 15th and then headed out to my parents to pull a few frames. Everything went well on pulling the frames. I was sure to get some eggs, larva, and nurse bees. Hopefully these workers will make a new queen.

I was very excited for the presentation today, it was hot and sunny all day today. 98 degrees, but I got a call around 4pm saying that it had been cancelled because of 100% chance of thunderstorms. I was bumming.

I unpacked the mini van. Then I had to deal with the observation hive. The bees had been locked up since about 2pm on Thurs. I had a jar of sugar water feeding the bees, but knew that they really needed to fly. So I had figure out where to put them. It was decided to put them in my son's room, so I began cutting some wood for the window, drilling holes for the tubes and cutting plastic tubing for an entrance.

While my wife and daughter went shopping, I worked. My son was hanging out with his friend, but was very excited about having an observation hive in his room, so he kept popping in and out. Finally his friend went to dinner and we were all set to assemble the entrance and tubes. I installed a piece of wood with a 1 inch diameter hole in it for the inner window, then slide a clear tube from the hive to a tube with a piece of wood for a platform landing . Then I put down the storm window over the tube and duct taped the storm window crack. My son and I then proceeded to attach the entrance tube. Luckily only one bee escaped into my son's room.

Then we noticed that some honey bees were slipping in through the storm window and duct tape. I decided to remove the duct tape to free the bees, but then noticed that the bees were now entering under the storm window and trapped between the inside window and storm windows. Uggg ! I decided to wait until morning until they settled down to fix the storm window issue. I'll post an update tomorrow.