Musings of a reluctant beekeeper

 Not all bees are girl bees.  Each hive will contain a Queen bee, worker bees (aka honey bees) and drone bees.   The drone bees are the boy bees and their sole job is to mate with queen.  They do not gather nectar or pollen.  They also have a relatively short live span - and they don't sting.  They don't even have a stinger. Drones are not popular bees in the hive.  If they don't die while mating with their queen, they are expelled from the hive come fall and left to die.   Drone bees depend on worker bees to feed them too!  I could insert a "typical man" joke here but let's face it - we need our drones bees!  But then again, there is a queen that uses a drone and then he dies - what does that say about the queen?  Things that make you go hmmm....

 Yesterday was bee feeding day.  We were a day late but that is ok!  I have mentioned that we have some temperamental bees with an attitude so we decided to bring out the smoker. So why do we smoke our bees?  In the age of consent, it is presumptuous to assume that the bees want to be smoked.  Their body, their choice?!  If you watched a certain Bee Movie, you may have learned that smoking bees is like a drug to them.  In the movie, the bees become docile and pass out as if stoned from smoking too much. But, I am here to teach you that that is NOT the case!  What the smoke actually does is mask the bee phenomes that say "Hey - yo!  Danger Will Robinson!!"  Smoking the bees does NOT - let me repeat - does NOT make my bees more docile.  They don't pass out and act like stoners from old 80's movies.  (Gnarly dude!)  Instead, when we smoke our bees, they get angry!  They fly around and make a loud noise.  Even though they get all riled up, they are away from the hive fram