Meet the Droogies

On Saturday, Eric took Emerson and me to meet our two beehives, also known as "the droogies." They live in the Bee Yard on Stanford's campus and they are busy making honey for us.

There comes a moment when one is wrapping one's not-yet-three-months-old son in mosquito netting in his carseat to take him to see hundreds of thousands -- perhaps millions -- of bees, when one questions one's parental judgment. Then the moment passes and one proceeds with one's mosquito-net-wrapped son into the Bee Yard.

Eric lit the smoker and we walked through the 40 or so hives to get back to our two. It was spectacularly neat: there they were! The Droogies. At the entrances of the hives we could see lots of activity, with bees flying out to forage for nectar and being checked by the guard bees when they tried to come back in.

We examined both hives, which meant that we opened them up and pulled out the different frames. Droogie 1 is going gangbusters - lots of brood (a sign that the hive is healthy) and lots of capped honey. Droogie 2 is full of slacker bees and is not doing so well. Perhaps this will present us with the learning opportunity of what to do when things go wrong with your hives. Eric got some great photos which you can see on his post on this same topic.

Emerson slept the whole time so he will probably not remember his first visit to the droogies. (And I'm not sure he could have seen very well through all that mosquito netting even if he had been awake.)

Given the cooler climate this year, the slightly late start with the hives and who knows what else, this year may not be a huge honey harvest but we sure are enjoying keeping some bees!