Spring in our urban meadow (our back yard)

April was a busy month for us with both our programs (The Cajun Experience and Cajun Fiddler Honey Bee Show) booked just about as much as we'd like for them to be booked every month. One of our favorite experiences was to go LSU to introduce the parents of incoming freshmen (and the freshmen themselves) to our culture "down here."  But my very favorite was bringing the honeybees to young kids (3, 4 and 5 year olds). Such fun! We got one of the teachers to put on the beekeeper's whites (the children were too small for even our children's beekeeper suits!), hood and gloves and all (she was a small teacher, almost just right for our children's suits.)

And April was a busy month for our bees as well. We brought the number of our hives down to 2 last winter because of one weak hive. But we've been busy putting a super (where the honeybees store their honey) on each hive every week. It will soon be time to harvest that golden delight (some beekeepers, including Goldren Delight Honey beekeeper James Henderson, are already harvesting).

I told a friend of mine in an email that the queen lays about 2,000 eggs a day. The eggs take about 20 days for the 2,000 to be ready to eat their way out of the cell. In that 20 days she's laid another 40,000 eggs to begin their 20-day cycle. In the spring and summer months, honeybees live from 28-35 days, so by the time the second batch of eggs hatch, the first gaggle of bees have about reached the end of their lives. It's that 28-35 days that allow the hive to build up in numbers (and therefore in honey). Any way you do the math, that's a bunch of busy bees!