It's been an exciting couple of months. We're now back up to 23 hives as one of our new-found neighbors wanted to keep the swarm that showed up on their property. Fortuitously, they have the most amazing garden of all Oak Grove, Oregon, and are inclined to trade us an almost-unlimited supply of beautiful organic produce. 

The top bar hives throughout Oak Grove/Milwaukie, Oregon are absolutely booming. The two top bar hives in our back yard are so full of bees that at night, when the entire population is home, there are at least 1000 bees huddling together outside the entrance. Out of the 30 bars they've been given, they've already filled up at least 26, meaning that harvest time is here! Yesterday I harvested the first bar of honeycomb from one of the backyard hives. Later this week, after acquiring 20 food grade buckets, I will be harvesting from the rest in preparation for the massive loads of blackberry nectar that are beginning to show up.

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What a week! After more than 6 months of planning and building, the first 10 packages in the 20 hive apiary expansion have been installed. 5 packages of Italians and 5 packages of Carniolans arrived at Ruhl Bee Supply on Monday, after a trek from Northern California's Oliveraz Bee Company. It was an unusually warm day -- almost 80 degrees in April!

My wife, a photographer from the Oregonian and I met at Ruhl, waited in line for 20 minutes to pay and then entered the holy of holies: The small warehouse containing over 10,000,000 honey bees -- 1000 packages. Our photographer was obviously taken aback by the sight and intense sound, but slowly began to adjust to the idea.

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