Have you ever heard the buzz of 50,000 bees on a hot summer day? The sound is truly remarkable, though somewhat enigmatic. It is at once, calming and awe-inspiring, primative yet sophisticated, natural yet electric, with sounds made by individual members of the group which then blend together to produce a collective but unified chorus - like a Gregorian chant. Come over sometime and place your ear against the hive and you'll hear what I'm talking about. Or better yet, stick around while we open up the hive, as we did today when we installed our queen excluder, which is basically a grate that goes between the hive bodies and the supers. The function of the queen excluder is to provide a grate with spacing large enough for workers to go through but too small for the queen to negotiate. This allows for compartmentalization of brood production from some of the honey storage so that the supers contain only honey, which is what we will harvest from in due time.
I love that sound. Nothing compares. I also love the smell of the wax boards and the smoke calming the bees - ahhhh... It almost makes you think that summer is here. ALMOST.
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