The Bee Guild

(copied from my post to Faceb00k...)

I went to a Bee Guild meeting tonight; it was in the basement of an otherwise-silent church, and they'd neglected to mark the doorway, with the air of people who have done this many times before -- fortunately I'd worked out this problem back in November.  I felt like I was going to a secret political meeting or something: 'shh, everyone come separately, park in the back, and look casual!'  There were more than a hundred people there, seated in rows of chairs towards a podium, chatting animatedly.  I half-expected someone to step up and raise his hands into the air, urging us to...do something!

Instead, it was four older people cheerfully answering questions about bees and how to care for them, lamenting about what a bad season it had been, then joking that they were here to find out why they're such bad beekeepers, and to say how, apparently, not to set up one's hives.  The chatter was idly punctuated partway through by an older guy's phone, which played (of course!) "Flight of the Bumblebee" until he dug it out and stepped away to tend to his call.

Two hours flew by in a flash, including a video on how to install bee 'packages' (what you get when you buy a queen), what equipment you'll need, and of course five different ways to do most things, depending on which beekeeper you talk to. It ended with an informational chat by a youngish guy who runs a local feed store, who has recently started stocking bee supplies (yay!) and who impressed us by actually knowing what he was talking about, as it turned out that he was busy caring for many hives of his own.  He had various equipment there, and I got to see (and weigh, since one will have to wrangle them) a full-size hive body box -- that's a single unit of one of the white boxes you sometimes see in stacks at the edges of fields.  It's about the size of a filing box.  I'm thinking of getting a shorter version, which will be easier for me to heft.

All in all, the group seemed like a great community, and I'm glad that I've joined them for the year.  My brain is doing its best to soak up a lot of information.  I look forward to the next monthly meeting, even though it means that I have to miss a wood class.  T-minus three or four weeks and counting...depending on how the almond pollination season goes!