Bee Report – June 24th 2011

[Paul Dosen is a new young volunteer at Willow Springs, who doesn't let visual impairment get in the way of beekeeping! - Willow Springs Volunteers]

Upon my arrival at Willow Springs, my first challenge was to navigate my way to where the bee hive was located and remove the electric fence wire which ran horizontally across and connected to a latch on each spruce tree. After a while I got used to it, using one hand to trail along the wire while holding the disconnected wire in the other!

My next task was to lay wax foundation into 10 deep frames that were going to be added onto the bee hive so that the bees can continue working on hive expansion. It was quite a challenge bending the wax sheets into the frames and tucking them into the little slots on the inner part of the frame, and embedding the wax foundation into the horizontal wires that went across it. The wax foundation gives the bees a point of reference and acts as a guide for where they are to draw the wax comb, building a layer of wax on top of the foundation.

Next, we had to add this new brood box on to the hive and I noticed how the behaviour of the bees had changed from when I first arrived. The hive had been just opened and the bees were extremely investigative in nature, scrutinizing every move we made and paying close attention to our hands. When the hive was reassembled, the behaviour of the bees changed again, they were extremely curious investigating the hive boxes from top to bottom, propilizing any cracks that were visible to them and insuring that any nosey neighbours were kept at bay.

~Paul Dosen