Beautiful busy bees in my blooming lavender

Honey bee supping on nectar

Bee Keeping in the Southern Highlands

I have recently become very interested in keeping bees. You might remember Howard and I went to a course recently with the legendary Bruce White. You can check my previous posts by clicking on the photos.

 .     

Day one                            Day two including videos of honey extracting and a swarm

A key thing I discovered in the course was to wait until Spring to start a hive , if you start in Autumn or winter they won't have time to store honey to feed on through the cold months.  So I have time to continue to learn and get all my equipment ready.  The next step I took was to join the Southern Highlands Apiarists Association to meet other local bee keepers and get support to make my plan happen.

Today I went to my third meeting, the AGM, and became secretary. So there will be many more bee stories to come.

Moss Vale Community Garden hosted the AGM today

The cosmos was full of happy bees

Sylvia checking the Club hive

@homespunbliss now on twitter

I have signed up for a twitter account. I know, I know, not exactly an early adopter!

I didn't bother before because I don't have a smart phone but actually, its just fine on my laptop.

I am really enjoying it - working out who to follow, working out how to get followers. Finding wonderful homespun information about bees, gardening, growing food, yoga and all sorts of other homespunbliss.  I set myself a goal of gaining 20 followers in my first week and I have just reached that. Thanks everyone.

So now if the blog format does not work for you, or you want instant updates, you can follow my journey to homespunbliss on Twitter @homespunbliss, on pinterest Jodie Healy @homespunblissblog.

Day 2 bee keeping course with Bruce White

Amazing day 2 of the bee keeping course.  This is what a swarm looks like: terrifyingly beautiful. 

After the swarm was dropped the bees flooded back into the hive as a dark safe place. 

I took heaps of photos so stay tuned because I will post more as I sort and label them.

We came home with heaps of knowledge, practical experience and a jar full of the freshest, tastiest honey imaginable.

Extracting the honey gets the heart rate up.

Thanks to Andrew Britton, Bruce White and smallfarmsnetwork. 

Bee keeping course with Small farms network and Bruce White

Day 1 of a bee keeping course in Berry was wonderful.

Howard bravely held a frame teaming with bees! He didn't get stung but I did. Youch. It hurt but I've had worse I guess.

Fabulous frame covered in bee brood - or baby bees safely cocooned in their cells. I marked some drone bees, the ones that mate with virgin Queens, with a red whiteboard marker. Learning about bees is quite scandalous in mixed company! 

Honeycomb! Yum. Worker bees making honey. How gorgeous.

Just a taster - more tomorrow.