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Sometimes in life you get stung, and it hurts. And you would have never got stung had you not have been going for something great!  In my case it was - honey. I love honey.  And I did not get my honey...yet.  But it will be worth it when I get my honey. It will be sweet, and be everlasting...

----some moral fiber for you to chew on...

Peace

Ouch! Right in the Face!

A routine sugar-water swap got a little out of hand late Thursday night.
My bees became very flustered and I probably should have just walked away, when out of no where comes a bee ( who by the way got a huge flying start) and rams me ( piemmm) right in the face.  This guy landed a direct hit.  I had never been stung by a bee before.  And it probably would not have been so bad except a few things went wrong.

1) I could barely find the stinger to pull it out because it was in my beard.
2) This bee stung me like 2-3 freckles away from my lip.  See pictures below

Visitors From A Far

A good friend mine comes to visit Ben's Bees,

He wanted to see the Queen,

Instead, he received some honey-cinnamon teas,

His name is not Charlie Sheen.

This bee is on a beautiful white flower,

Did you hear they were gonna rebuild the twin towers?

I sometimes wonder how it feels to fly,

I  sometimes wonder if I will when I die.

Bee Video

Emergency Entry!

URGENT.  EMERGENCY.

These two words ran through my head late Sunday night.  Sunday afternoon I noticed that my bees were very, very flustered.  I mean they were in a ruckus.  They were blocking the entry, flying and buzzing and swarming around the hive for no apparent reason.  I thought is this the attack of intruders - a wasp, another colony perhaps - is this a war going on.  Is my Queen mating?  Do they need more room to enter/exit?  I didn't know.  Finally, they calmed down.  Then, I noticed that I had more ants lining up and around my beehive appearing to enter from the top.  OH NO!  MORE ANTS!  What if they are eating all my honey inside?  That's all I could think about.  They better not be eating my honey, hmmm, I bet they are.  Quick, we must get rid of them.  I quickly researched online to find out.  Turns out -  ants are in fact a big predator of bees.  They can eat the honey and even eat the young bee larva.  Solutions:  peppermint or spearmints leaves on top of frames and cinnamon around the hive.  My friend had also just told me the ants hate cinnamon.  I quickly searched for a big cheap bottle of cinnamon.  No such luck.  Great now I have to use my cinnamon from Saigon that I bought in California that I know I will never find in Arkansas - just dandy!  Fine, when it comes to my bees I spare nothing.  Luckily for me, my mom happened to have some spearmint on the front porch - CLUTCH.  Grabbed it, suited up, and went in for an EMERGENCY hive opening.  Upon the emergency opening of the hive, I was RELIEVED AND GLAD to see that there was not a trail of ants lining into the beehive stealing honey or eating my baby bees.  In fact, almost no ants were inside.  I took the this time to examine almost every frame.  It appears as my bee larva has hatched, and I could not find any currant bee larva uncovered which I was surprised at.  But I did find lots and lots of honey.  I place the spearmint leaves on top as planned just in case, as well as poured my precious cinnamon around the hive.
BONUS SIGHTING:   QUEEN ORTENSIA WAS ROAMING AROUND... My little Queen :)
What an awesome sight to see,  She looked healthy and happy. 

Patience...Waiting

Patience. Strong word, strong secret powers. I really felt like God taught me a life lesson the other day and I want to share it with everyone. I was sawing down some tree limbs, I was sawing upwards. Very hard to do. I mean I have sawed down trees with chainsaws, hand-saws, and even axed trees before. But nothing compares to how difficult it is to saw upward with an extended polesaw! Anyways, I was struggling, struggling to saw this limb. It would not fall. I made up my mind I was goinh to saw 50 strokes. I crashed on stroke 40. I mean I could not saw another stroke for the life of me. I rested for about 2 minutes there on the ladder and while resting, suddenly, crack- that limb fell down. I was shocked. Then, I got this message. Sometimes in life the work has already been down- it just becomes a patient waiting period for the right time- God's time. So don't get burnt out on something in life, learn to wait if you feel as if the work is done. Remember, it's ok if the work is done. Have peace in that.
Peace... :)

A work in Progress...

Poll results in, the people say I that being stung is as imminent.  Great.  Thanks for you opinion.  LOL!
The beehive is going good.  The bees are great.  I will be entering the hive soon to do some research, primarily focusing on the cleanliness of the hive as well as looking for any signs of diseases.  I believe and hope my hive to be a healthy one.  Like anything you care about in life, beehives require attention and care.  Why just the other day numerous ants were invading my beehive, mostly attempting to lick whatever sugar water drops they could find.  I spent a lot of time just killing them one by one as my beehive will not be home to two different insects if I can help it.  Also, my father and I built an entrance gate to the beehive area.  This gate makes it easy to walk in and out and keeps out the dogs, raccoons, and opossums and such.  Beekeeping require work!  Hope to get some new videos of the bees up soon!

Pretty cool huh?
Well, my current project is clearing some tree limbs around the beehive area to increase sunlight into the area both for the bees, but also in order to grow things.
Hope to get some new videos of the bees up soon!