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foooood in portugal

beehive inspection

when i was in portugal earlier this month, my brother gave me a tour of the family’s new beehive (the previous one was hit by the varroa mite and couldn’t be salvaged). the tour was a little scary, but very informative! i’m afraid we spoke portuguese throughout the whole thing, but if you’ve ever wondered what the inside of a beehive looks like, here’s your chance to find out!

yes, i know, i make a lot of questions… and hyperventilate a little every now and then… we weren’t exactly planning on publishing the video with sound, but i think it’s a lot more interesting when you know what you’re looking at. :)

i’ve since learnt that ours is a lusitana hive, (a type of langstroth hive), with a brood box (brown bottom part, where the queen nests and bees are born) and honey super (top blue part, where the honey is stored). did you notice how hard it is for the frames to come out sometimes? that’s because of propolis, a resinous mixture that is collected by the bees and used for sealing gaps.

you can see how quiet and calm the bees are in the beginning – but that quickly changes when we get to the brood box, where the queen is.

i’m only now just learning about bees, but i find it fascinating (and a little scary, as you can probably see in the video). if all goes well, this christmas we should have a nice amount of honey to give away to the whole family :)

8 replies on “beehive inspection”

Ai, que interessante, são mesmo trabalhadoras as abelhas!! Mas eu também ia hiperventilar com tanta abelha à minha volta! :P

I was surprised to see that no smoker was used to keep the bees quiet and docile. I have several friends who are beekeepers and they always have a smoker and give a couple of puffs of smoke first when they go to their hives.

Another thing that many people don’t realise is that bees drink a lot of water and in summer my friends always are out at their hives filling up water recepticles for their bees. I also remembered a time we were camping and out dog’s water bowl was drained in 24 hours by wild bees searching for water during the drought we were having then. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mundoo/5338265114/

Great video Ana. Even though I couldn’t understand Portuguese it was easy to understand because you seemed to be asking questions that we all would ask with a visual answer shown.

The taste of fresh honey is sublime.

Amazing video, Ana! Don’t think I would be as brave if I were in your shoes…
My father used to grow bees in Alentejo, somehow this felt as a small tribute to him as well. Thank you!

I had two holes in the wall with beehives doing the job for years and it was huge. we call someone near city to remove and take care of them :)
i have some photos and i wasn’t protected.
Hum wish i could be a beekeeper.
its a shame people think its not for me.now. actually i don’t care about doing beekeeping.

>>>>> http://goo.gl/JmNm4

thank you

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