After investing two hours in capturing a swarm of bees, we finally succeeded. The photos depict the swarm itself, followed by the bees fanning to signal others to join them in the swarm box. However, this morning, they changed their minds about the box, returned to the tree, and eventually flew away. Just another day in beekeeping adventures!
Swarm of Bees
The Honey Bees are Here!
July 2022
The FOTO Homestation Garden is buzzing with bee news. In the Spring of 2022 FOTO expanded its bee colonies from two to five hives. This experience was fascinating and included splitting the two hives into five, rearing new queens and observing the colonies grow. This year we added honey supers to the two original hives and were able to harvest our first batch of honey. We have begun our distribution of our collected honey. Pictured below a few hardworking laborers get a suprise basket with vegetables and honey.
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May 19, 2021
The FOTO Homestation Garden welcomes our newest neighbors the Honey Bees. Thanks to a grant from Dominion Energy, Friends of the Occoquan was able to purchase all the necessary equipment to create two Honey Bee hives. It has been quite a learning experience and much more entailed than we could have ever imagined. The first step of the journey was locating the Bee Store in Tackets Mill in Lakerdige, VA. They have all the supplies a bee enthusiast beginner or experienced bee keeper could want. We began by taking most of the courses that the Bee Store offered. Next, with the help of a very knowledgeable staff we were able to begin to purchase our supplies for the two hives. These items included, 4 deep boxes, frames for those boxes, hive tools, bee suits, screens, feeders and more. The next step was finding a local bee source (nucs).Thanks to Mick Schallar of Uncle Bill's Bees we were able to get local honey bees with two queens. Mick and his son came over to help our hives get established and since that time have made a few visits to ease our worried minds. As of 8/10/2021 our hives are doing excellent and to prepare for the fall and winter we will soon be doing our first mite inspection.
