Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week to you.
Let me start this post with a page from my little fish book that I will be linking up to Mia's Fish challenge at Art Journal Journey.
All the pages in my little book have a watercolor background, along with some white ink designs that I outlined with a black pen. For this page I first used a letter stencil and a Sharpie to write the word wild, and then I used the reverse of white ink with black pen, meaning I used a white pen on the black ink.
I used a crayon to make some water around the wild word, and then I used some of these little confetti fish to create my school of tropical beauties. These all came in the same package, and I simply glued them down.
And some of you have been asking about my bees. They are doing well. I have a whole lot of them, and massive amounts of honey already (compared to what I had last year). I keep expecting to see more brood (eggs, larva, etc) when I look at the amount of honey, and I have to remind myself it's only been about a month since the bees arrived. The queen can only lay so many eggs in a day, although she does lay a huge amount.
Here's some photos from 2 weeks ago.
If you click on this next photo and enlarge it you can see the larva in the open honeycomb. They look like tiny white warms. The yellowish capped honeycomb has older but not yet hatched bees.
And here's some photos from when I opened the hive last weekend. The photos aren't as close up because my husband was home, and he took the photos on my phone. He's interested in the bees but still very nervous about them, so he didn't get too close.
All the white comb you can see in this next photo is honey.
I number my frames just so that I can put them back in the order they came out, which someone online suggested. The renumbers are because I have reused frames from last year.
It is interesting how this year's bees are so different from last year's bees. Because I'm still a novice, I don't know if that's good or bad or just how it is. We'll see how things go along. At least I am still learning a lot and enjoying the experience.
Thanks for visiting and have a great middle of the week.
13 comments:
Really cool with bee-keeping, which is something I never dare to try.
Your journal page is fabulous, lovely to see the new things you are trying out. The bees and the honeys look great, and I loved seeing the larva. Thanks for sharing, hugs,Valerie
!!! I love the bee updates. It's an exciting project, and I can't think of much more fun than honey and honeycomb from your very own bees :)
Oh nice art for sure. However, the bees are magnificent. I so enjoy seeing them and how they are making honey. Thanks for showing them today.
Thanks for showing the bees and the hives. I'm like your husband. Real interested but I have to stay far away. I hope you're enjoying the gorgeous weather.
Love the fishes page.
And you have my very biggest respect for the bee-keeping.
Just yesterday I told my teamleader, who has bees, too, that I had to harvest soooo many wood-strawberries cause some bees were really busy this year - pic to come!
We also have Oker (river)-bee-honey.
So sad the local honey-beer was no hit. But yay to bees! As long as they don´t go at me. Happened once, and it hurt (was may failure). Hugs and keep it on!
A wonderful fishy page Erika!
Great photos of the bees too, so interesting to read about them.
Its a great journal page Erika and Wow to those photos of your bees, I think you are very brave to be keeping bees and looking after them. I'm sure your honey will be delicious.
Yvonne xx
Beautiful page! Annd thanks for sharing the photos of bees. It's very interesting!
What time of year do you harvest the honey? And how? I'm so fascinated by this. I don't want to DO it, but I'm so intrigued!
Hi, Erika, hope you're week is winding down to chillax. Thanks for telling me the white ink brand, I was going to guess Dr. Ph, it's the standard. I have some Bombay and some Daler-Rowney FW, both need multiple coats. Well, that's a wild and wonderful page you've made. Love the watercolor backgrounds and those foamie fish coming in handy this month. I showed my Honey your bee pics, he was quite impressed but thought you needed smaller gloves. I'm like, I bet she has size L for a reason. He said your honey is coming along great. He spends time each week with Bill, his local honey supplier in town. Bill is hardcore, he keeps a mini-hive of bees just for stinging and has a thriving clientele. So, Honey's learned a lot from Bill. Honey said last time he was there, Bill was really sad, his mini-hive of bees just suddenly died and he's got no clue why. He keeps them separate and near his house. The honey making is out back in his yard like yours. Reminded me of my old childhood ballet teacher, her house/studio became infested with bees in the attic. I took our daughter there for a while and whenever the music stopped, you would hear this gawd awful drone/hum above you. Kind of unnerving. Enjoy, I wish you continued success and enjoyment. You should go visit Rain, I mean, you're already up that far north, what's another few hours? heehee Just on the other side of Maine. Y'all are two of the bravest women I know. The Wilderness Women, love it. XOX
Many thanks for keeping us updated with the bees, you seem to be doing very well.
All the best Jan
PS Lovely art page
Your Fish-page is creative and nicely done. I like the joyful fish pictures, they looks very nice towards your fresh background.
Here all is well, and weather is quit sunny and warm.
I'm wishing you a very joyful weekend xx
P.S. Super bee-photos! Thanks for sharing :)
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