thank you! wish you were closer..we've had one lonely bumble bee visit our flowers...

can't remember the site but are you members of the bee watch?

Good for you! My Dad used to have bees on the farm. Love
honey.

Sue

We have honey bees up in the timber where my cabin/trailer is. My grampa used to collect the honey too. Now, some other guy comes in and harvests it, and gives us some.
Leslie

That is so interesting. I wish I could be there to see and help you with the bees. Congratulations on your success. Are you in a fairly rural area? I was wondering what flowers the bees are visiting.

I have been interested in CCD and other issues affecting bees, and it's good to hear you have a successful project.

Yum!! Are you sellin'? If you aren't, be prepared for your friends and neighbors to duck when they see you coming with yet another jar of honey :^) Don't ask me how I know this...LOL
Do you need about a million recipes that use honey?????

Fantastic!! So happy for you...this is one hobby my husband and I would like to get into but there are just so many hours in a day. Maybe one day...Happy, happy for you!!
I love those little honey bees, they do so much good!!

Darleen

Bees really like the flowers on my Russian Sage.

I have had a hive of honeybees for twenty years. I love these little industrious bees so much and never get stunk. I lift them out of water when they fall in and they just crawl up my finger. We had a huge number of bees this spring but think they swarmed but now the hive is coming back strong with a new queen. Bees rule!

My younger son gave me an owl nesting box that I requested for Christmas. The bees found it first and filled it with comb and honey before we finally found someone who would remove them and relocate them. They said they felt that bees are suffering on farms because of the pesticides but not in neighborhoods where they are not used as frequently.

DH worked for a beekeeper for many years(15-18 years)! I helped during the extracting season, boss sold to Sioux Bee Honey Company. We used to go south to Texas every February to raise new bees and stayed til the end of April when they were trucked home and set out in the bee yards.
Honey is the nectar of gods!

Thank you all for your interest!
Susanjf, no, we aren't members of the bee watch, but we are Monarch monitors and with Cornell on their bird monitoring.
Socks, yes we are in a rural area. Our farm is only 9 1/2 acres, but we are surrounded by larger farms. Since bees will travel two miles or more for pollen, our girls have been gathering from our vegetable gardens and herb gardens, the neighbors flower beds and their vegetable gardens, too. They love African basil! Wish we could share our honey with you, too!
Jaybird, no, we aren't selling our honey this year--just giving it to the neighbors who have been so kind and helpful to us. Next year, perhaps. And those recipes sure sound interesting!
rthummer, beekeeping is not labor nor time intensive. Once the hives are set up, beekeepers only check on the bees about every two weeks or longer. Too much disturbance makes the bees unhappy. Gathering the honey is easy, and extracting, settling and bottling is done in stages.
Lily, aren't bees the gentlest beasts? I have them crawl up my arm while I'm in the vegetable garden (I swear they enjoy watching someone else work for a change!) and when I'm cutting herbs, I have to be careful with the scissors.

cool! i work for a very large landscape plant grower in the orlando area and we have several bee hives. this nursery has been here for 25+ yrs and the area has grown up around us. we have 250' of lake frontage for a very sought after lake, so you know there are multi-million $$ homes everywhere lol. well none of them know we have several hives, they are never affected by the bees and only the bears have a clue lol. bears (from Wekiva Springs Park)are our only concern, they know we have honey and occassionaly find the hives. one of our owners is really into beekeeping and has a friend, who is a specialist in bees,who comes from Ghana twice a yr to empty the hives. when my dh & i move to some land we'll have a couple hives hopefully :-) ~ liz