Bees

I have never kept bees. I have never harvested honey. Well, I’m about to try. I love honey and have always felt that the more local the honey, the more benefits it will give you. I’m going backyard local this spring! Here’s the deal, my husband is allergic to beestings but would still like to help me with the bees. Because of this, a lack of all equipment, and a strong curiosity, I’m trying out the Flow hive. I’ve been intrigued since the first time I saw one. They are spendy, but so is all of the equipment for extraction. I also don’t have a whole lot of room to store additional equipment. The Flow seems to solve those issues, so let’s see if we can do it!

I ordered the Arucaria 7 Frame. It shipped quickly from an American distributor and arrived in great condition. Our Christmas vacation project was to prime and paint the hive. My 6 year old is the artist and not only do we now have a protected hive, but we have some great memories of decorating it with Sharpies to make 3 lbs. of bees feel welcome. I’m not going to go into extreme detail on the Flow hive instructions since their website does a great job with instructions and video tutorials.

As we jump into beekeeping head first, we’ll see just how user friendly the Flow is for a first timer. My bees are on order and are due to arrive later in April. In the meantime, I’ve been watching Flow hive videos and reading all the bee articles I’ve collected. I’m glad I started reading in December since there’s a huge amount of information to get through. So, there you have it, no tricks or special insider info. I’ll update as we go along!