A little over a year ago Jonathan decided to become a bee-keeper. A swarm of bees landed near his classroom so he gathered them up in a carboard box and brought them home. They now live in a hive down in our back yard. Since then he has accumulated 2 more hives which are kept up the road at a native bush reserve.
I was initially a little nervous about having thousands of bees sharing our garden, but it turns out that if you don't bother them, they don't bother you. I have only been stung once, and that was when I stood on a bee as I ran across the grass. Max has probably been stung the most...but he has now learnt to stay away from the hive and to run for his life if a bee comes buzzing around.
So, February means honey harvest time. It is quite a process to get the honey extracted but after a very hot night of work we managed to extract about 50kgs of golden, runny honey! Its just amazing to me how much honey they can produce. We only take the excess and leave the majority for the bees to eat over the winter.
The sad fact is that it takes a single bee an entire 2 weeks to produce just 1/2 tsp of honey.
