Keeping Bees

Last weekend, the bee guy (who we bought our established bee hive from) came to bring Neil another super, or level for his hive.  Since they were going to be stirring things up a bit in the hive, Neil donned his bee-keeping "outfit".  Before going up the hill, he took the time to show the boys what the inside of a hive looks like before the bees are in it.  On one of the frames you can see part of an old hive structure.  The bee guy was very hopeful that we will have a good honey harvest in August!  I am hopeful too!!!  There's not much more that I would like than to be able to use my own honey, and to share it with family and friends. 

On a side note, in the last picture, you can see where our garden will be.  There are three tiers, with the top tier currently full of flowers.  We are going to leave those there, but hope to fill the other two beds full of fruits and veggies!  The owner of the house had brought in wonderful, rich dirt for the gardens that he and his wife used to have there.  It is GOOD dirt, if I do say so...the funny part is that even after we  had enriched the soil at our old house two years in a row, and toiled and turned the soil, it still was not even half as nice as the soil in this garden area.  I'm pumped!

We haven't planted the garden yet, with the exception of a few tomatoes and peppers.  But I'm glad now, since it has been raining in torrents for the better part of four days now.  We have "rivers" coming down our hill.  I'm fairly certain that most of our seeds would have washed away. :)

One other thing...for those of you interested...back behind the top tier are the kiwi vines.  This isn't a good picture of them, but they are packed full of leaves!  When we came to look at the house back in February, the vines had no leaves but were heavy with kiwi.  But when we finally got here in March, someone had come and cleaned off every last kiwi on the vines.  Hopefully next spring WE will get to enjoy the fruits of those vines!