Beekeeping Class at Bear Foot Honey

Today Brandon and I took a beekeeping class at the Bear Foot Honey Farm. It was all the way up in Santa Rosa, so we had to get up pretty early and it was an all day class. The morning was spent going over Colony Collapse Disorder, so I am glad that we brushed up on the basics by reading our books (Beekeeping for dummies is turning out to be a great book, very informative). In the afternoon we actually got to go out to the hives and take a look inside. I have never seen so much pollen all at once, apparently you can harvest it until mid to late summer. It tastes a lot like powdered flowers, it was interesting in small quantities, but a bit gross if you ate too much. Below is a picture of me holding a little fistful of pollen at the Bear Foot Honey Farm (I'm wearing a veil to keep the bees away from my face).

 

After the class I ordered a starter hive, it should be ready in late May, and then I will officially be a bee keeper (though inexperienced bee keepers are generally referred to as "bee havers" because they just have bees, and don't know much about tending to the needs of the bees, I'll try to be a "bee keeper" instead of a "bee haver").