A PHENOMINAL beginning to backyard beekeeping

You may remember my post from May of this year as I talked about my top bar hive. The bees were ordered from Ruhl Bee Supply www.ruhlbeesupply.com/

Jeannie picked them up and we installed them right away into the top Bar hive from Bee Thinking www.beethinking.com/

This is a company that has been in business in Oregon since about 2008. The popularity of backyard beekeeping and the simplicity of the top bar hive have helped Matt Red and his wife with their business, which grew so fast that they have been able to open a store in Portland’s Sellwood district. They offer classes and support online with tons of information. Well on July 20, 2011, my mentor from the Willamette Valley Beekeepers Association http://wvba.templeofbees.com/ stopped by to see if I needed help. We quickly looked at the bees, but did not have a smoker. So we could not proceed. He did pronounce the bees as phenomenal. The hive was full! Much of it was capped honey.

The following Saturday, Matt Reed from Bee Thinking came to fix a problem with the hive. My mentor joined us. We removed every bar from the hive and found that we needed to remove some honey to make room for the bees. The bees were surprisingly tolerant of his work. Matt Reed found the hive to bee in excellent condition.

We took five or six bars, returning the empty bars to the hive.

Here is my harvest. I boxed 11 four inch square combs, 12 hex jars, 4 pints, and 4 half pints. What an amazing beginning to beekeeping!