 History of Arbor's Apiary Arbor's Adolescent Program has a thriving apiary which forms the basis of an occupation project each year, provides honey and beeswax to our microeconomy, and greatly increases the pollination of our fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Our students have presented at the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association as expert beekeepers and are participating in The Great Sunflower Project, an online bee research project that involves our students in real and meaningful scientific inquiry, data collection, and data analysis.
Our Apiary - Update, February 18, 2010 Welcome to Arbor’s second year of beekeeping! For those who do not know, we have a small apiary located at the end of the Masonic Lodge’s parking lot, next to the garden. We have two hives out there, each run by a queen bee: Queen Maria’s hive, named after Maria Montessori, and Queen Lorraine’s hive, named after Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth (inventor of the type of hive we use). We have had a pretty good year with the bees so far. In September we got a good harvest of honey from Maria’s hive. I hope the families who purchased the honey at the Arbor Market enjoyed it. In October, we began preparing our hives for winter. The winter is the most unproductive season. Spring is a hive’s most flourishing season, when their population booms and there is tons of work. In winter, the hive’s population will drop to ultimate lows and there will be close to no activity, if any. During the winter period, the bees can barely move and need to cluster together for warmth. They will need plenty of food. If they don’t have enough stored honey to support themselves, then we will feed them sugar syrup. When we checked in October, Maria’s hive was doing fine for itself, but Lorraine’s hive was going to need a little help. We fed Lorraine’s hive until winter break. When it is too cold outside to open up the hives, we have to perform the “lift test” to see how the bees are doing. The lift test consists of lifting the hives slightly to see how heavy they are. If the hive stays heavy throughout the winter, the bees are probably still doing well. But if it keeps getting lighter every time we check, that may mean that the bees are dying. Right now, the hives are both doing pretty well. Both of the hives are relatively heavy. We are currently looking for a day when it is warm enough out to take a peek inside of the hives and see what is really happening. Until then all we can do is wait. In our next article, we’ll let you know how well the bees overwintered. Have a good day! Bee Products
This year has been a good year for bee products. In the fall we harvested all the honey we could from our bees. We had to leave the rest so that they could get through the winter. Our bees' honey sold out very quickly, so we bought a big bucket from Blue Ridge farms, to get us through the rest of the year. Since then, we have been bottling and labeling that honey to sell at the Arbor Market.
At the beginning of the year, we had three molds for molded candles: an emergency taper, a skep (hive), and a diamond pattern. Those sold pretty well. We wanted to try out something new, so we got two new molds. One is a large pine cone, the other is a small twister votive. We have sold these at a few markets now, and they have done well.
We also have rolled candles. We buy the patterned sheets and heat and roll them. We have many colors, including natural, orange, blue, purple, and green.
A new product, for the bees, is lip balm. It used to be made by the market, but was transferred over to the bees, because it has bees wax in it. We just made a new batch and it sold very well at the market. At this time, we have peppermint and natural.
We hope you keep coming to the Arbor Market and would love to hear how you like or have enjoyed our products.
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