The south side of our house has been very neglected. It’s the one area that unfortunately has been, out of sight out of mind. The Renaissance Man has spent last week rototilling, leveling, and preparing this space to bring the bees home. This side of our house will become our The Apiary a.k.a. The Home for the Honeybees.

Here is the path looking toward the back of our lot. The Renaissance Man flattened the area on the right underneath the window, which is where we’ll be putting the bees.

The Renissance Man also received some help from family, who arrived mid-week to say hello. Things sure come together fast when you have extra help! On this side of the house we decided to do a more flexible path option and utilized cedar chips. I have a feeling that at some point we’ll add some curvature to that path, but for now a straight path is exactly what we need.

The path was then carried along the fence line up to the garden area.

Sunday morning we left the house well before daylight to go pick up our beehives. Thankfully I was able to find my headlamp which made the process of moving the honeybees in the dark much easier. It’s important to get to the bees in the early morning darkness because the bees are all in the hive, and it’s much easier to seal up the hives for the move.

Although it looks like the hives are full with honey, the top honey supers are empty. We left them on top after we spun the honey so that the bees would clean out the rest of the honey off the empty comb. The next time we get into the bee hives we’ll remove the honey supers and let the bees settle down into the hive bodies (the bottom two boxes).

Our our way back to Dundee the sun was just starting to rise and it sure was beautiful.

We made it all the way home without a single issue, yay! Much improved over our last adventure moving the hives.

This is the area on the side of the house that we set up for the hives. The hives are setting on four concrete blocks and two 4”x4” posts. This set up gets the hives off the ground and provides a safe space for the bees.

You’ll notice that we’ve also faced the hive entrance toward the house so that the bees will fly up and out, as oppose to having a low take off which would prevent us from actively using the path on this side of the house.

Here I am in my “fancy” makeshift bee suit!

The Renaissance Man is getting ready to remove the tape and let the bees out of the hives.

The last step was to replace the flat top lids with the fancy pitched roofs. What’s neat about this location is that you can really see the bees when you look out the window. The window is practically a “bee observatory.”

Since moving the honeybees is a pretty major event, we decided to wait a week or so before we open things up and do a good check on the hives. But for now, it sure is good to have the bees home.