Agriculture Reference
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minute battle, this method actually started to work, but it took some time to get those
twigs to actually catch fire. I kept wondering, “How does a single match burn an entire
house down when I cannot even light a humble fire in my smoker?” There unequivoc-
ally was an art to keeping your smoker lit, and it would be years before I mastered it.
But eventually that day I established a smoldering flame.
Donningmyveil, Iwasreadytoopenmyhive.Standing tothesideofmyhive,with
the sun at my back, I blew some smoke at the entrance. Then, with one hand, I lifted
the front outer cover while puffing away with the smoker with the other. I removed the
outer cover and leaned it along the side of the hive. When I tried to lift the inner cover,
it snapped open, as if it had been glued shut. This was my first encounter with propolis.
Worker bees collect this reddish brown resin by gathering the sap from tree buds. Bees
use propolis, or bee glue, as beekeepers call it, to seal up cracks and crevasses in their
hive to protect the colony from weather, bacteria, and disease that may enter the hive.
Thus, they maintain a sanitary environment. One thing I can tell you is that once pro-
polis gets on your clothing, it will remain there for a lifetime. A wise beekeeper carries
a spray bottle of alcohol to the hives to help dissolve propolis that may get stuck to fin-
gersorclothes.Later,Iwouldlearntorespectpropolisforallitswonderfulbenefitsand
gently scrape away the excess for my own personal use in healing remedies.
OnceIremovedtheinnercover,Ileaneditagainstthesideofthehiveaswell.Lean-
ing the covers against the hive, as opposed to laying them flat, ensures that any bees
still crawling around on them will not get crushed. Then with both hands, I lifted off
the feeder box and placed it on the grass. The bees had completely devoured the entire
batch of sugar water, and I would need to refill it before closing up the hive.
I was relieved to observe that my honeybees were calm. They crawled over the tops
of the frames, ignoring my presence. I was taught that when the worker bees line up
along the top bars of the frames and begin staring at you, it's time to smoke again. But
these bees seemed to have no interest in me. I peered inside the hive and saw the queen
cage sitting between the two frames where I placed it last weekend. A wave of anticip-
ation came over me as I reached in between the frames to dislodge it. As I removed the
cage, along with it came a pristine white piece of burr comb . Burr comb is a piece of
beeswax honeycomb that the bees make where there is more than ⅜ inch of space any-
where within the hive. This exact measurement is Langstroth's bee space, and it is the
perfectsizeforaworkerbeetopassthrough.And,asLangstrothdiscovered,ifthebees
detect this amount of space anywhere in the hive, they build comb to fill it in. Such a
space had opened up in my hive because we'd removed the fifth frame to make space
for the queen cage. Once the queen cage was removed and the fifth frame set back in
its place, there would be no extra space, and the bees would make wax on the frame, as
they should.
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