The last two weekends have been nearly entirely absorbed by building a honeybee hive. We didn't have one of the major tools required (some weird drill, I dunno) so we built ours from a kit. Similar to the style of this kit, but twice as tall.
Building the frames was quite tedious: trying to hammer tiny nails without damaging the beeswax, sheesh. Mariann and Preston stopped by and pitched in while we were assembling the 40! frames.
The wax is pretty neat, same stuff that you can roll to make beeswax candles. Apparently the bees will be forced (mwoo hah hah hah hah) by instinct to build up and finish the structure. Here's a little-known tidbit: 40 slices of beeswax makes your house smell like hippie. Not the original hippie or the patchouli hippie, closer to the more urban co-op hippie. Like you could expect to walk a few feet and smell wheat germ or spirulina or canvas sneakers.
