Buzz Words

Bees are a female centric society. All the bees you have ever seen were more than likely female bees, because the drones (males) are only there to service the Queen. Not their own Queen, but other Queens. A Queen will not mate with a drone from her own hive. The Queen bee has the power to decide which eggs will be drones and how many she will need. All the rest are workers. From the moment they are tiny little bees, they all have responsibilities. Like taking care of the larvae, then cleaning the hive, until they graduate to forage nectar.

Now, the story goes that bees defy all laws of aerodynamics, and that they shouldn’t be able to fly. That’s true, if you think of bees as airplanes. But bees aren’t airplanes. Bees do not have stiff wings and airplanes don’t move their wings. This story is so old, that we don’t really know were it started and without going to much into it, basically, a few engineers and mathematician got drunk and tried to do calculations. For years, this is what we consider researched facts. Don’t believe me, watch The Bee Movie.

What more recent well documented research and experiments have found is that bees rotate their wings creating pockets of low air pressure, which create small eddies lifting the bee into the air. It really is fascinating, if you’re into that kind of stuff.

As some of you may know, I’m a Margaret Atwood fan. One of my favorite parts about the Maddam Trilogy is the God’s Gardners’ bee keepers and everything that they represent.

We are getting Bees.

One of the things I’ve learned lately is that we can keep bees in Fort Lauderdale. I thought we needed more room, but we don’t so we’re getting bees. It’s good for the environment, it will make for a healthier yard for the chickens and great for honey. We got some lessons from a local bee keeper, we watched some videos and now we have a hive. I’ll be picking them up tomorrow.

We have our hive ready. Meaning that the kid and I painted it and decorated it. I will be reviewing the videos again tonight cause you know.

We got our bees last week. These ladies are amazing.

I had to transfer them with the help of 2kicks and for the first few hours they were investigating the area including buzzing by the chickens. By that night they had all gone to sleep and almost a week later they have made their home.

It’ll still be at least a year before we get honey, but this season of crops should be bountiful which is a great thing.