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Hey, we're keeping our farm productive and strong with a little help from Mother Nature.
I'm so excited to finally have some honey bees out here at the farm. We've always had
honey bees showing up, but they've come from other places. Maybe even Steve and Sara's.
But now I have my own right here at the farm. I'm so thankful for Steve and Sara for helping
me get them set up. You know, sometimes you just need a little push. Alright, we've got
this first hive here. Right. Look at that. So this is just a cover. Really, it's just
a decorative cover. I'm gonna set it aside. And then on top of it, what we have is a screen.
And this is a little bit of honey comb that the bees have put up here just because they
had some empty space in the hive. But I have to say, the greatest benefit to me and this
farm and what we do here and to my garden, well, it's pollination. The bees will really
make sure that the yield goes up. They'll take care of the pollination if I'll take
care of the cultivation. And together, we'll produce a lot of vegetables. If there's a
shortage of pollinators at bloom time in the spring, you might not get as much fruit as
you otherwise would. And with the honey bees here, they will fly to the flowers and in
collecting the nectar from the flowers, they'll get pollen all over their bodies. And then
when they fly to the next blossom, that pollen will then will pollinate or fertilize the
fruit. Yeah, that's what you want. That's fantastic. Now this is a new colony. And by
new, I mean, this is swarm of bees that Sara and I captured hanging from a tree in our
fruit orchard. Now it probably came from one of our hives in our bee yard. Right, right.
But, because the swarm always has a healthy queen and always has young, healthy bees in
it, it's a great tool for starting a new colony for Moss Mountain Farm. Right, well, I'm happy
to have them up here. And they look happy already. They are very happy. And you can
see that the bees are hanging around in here. They're not flying out. No, they seem very
calm. They do seem very calm, and one of the reasons for that is that they have a new queen.
And I'm gonna lift out this frame and you'll be able to see the queen. Get under it here.
You got it? Yeah, I got it. Okay, just tip it back toward you just like this. And you
can see her. And you can see the queen cage right here. Yep. Here she is. Inside, you
can see the queen. Yep. She's got a little blue dot on her back. Yep, there she is. It's
a very good sign that all of these bees are hovering around this cage, isn't it? It is.
Now, Steve, how many eggs do you think this queen will lay? Do you have any kind of idea?
Because, I mean, the number of bees in this one hive is huge. Well, when this box is full,
it probably will have around 60,000 bees in it. And it's not anywhere near full, yet.
Right. The queen can lay, according to the literature that I've read, up to a 1000 eggs
a day for about two years. Wow. So… She's a busy lady. She is a very busy lady. I can
certainly say from first hand experience that beekeeping can be a really rewarding and fun
hobby. Like any hobby, you just need to make sure that you've gone through some education,
you know what you're doing, you get a mentor like I have with Steve, and you wanna make
sure that you have all the equipment and everything in place before you actually get your bees.
And from there on, it's a lot of fun. Steve, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you
and Sara helping me get these step up here at the farm. And we're gonna have lots of
honey. Okay, take your hands and feel this to make sure that it's centered.