Photos: So you want to be a beekeeper

Beekeeping requires no small investment. The gear you need for just one hive will cost about $700.

There are various kinds of bees available for keeping. These are Saskatraz bees, a newer, pest-resistant strain with a noticeably dark color.

A typical summer shot shows bee traffic in and out of a hive.

But peace doesn't always preside. For instance, there can be a swarm when space gets tight. In this case,  Queen Butterscotch (center) took half the bees in one hive to form another. She is recognizable by her long, tapered abdomen, which makes her nearly twice as big as the workers around her. The bees that were left behind had to "re-queen.

A couple of days after one hive swarmed, beekeeper Gemma Tarlach put a "robber screen" on this hive when bees began to leave en masse again: a secondary swarm. After about an hour, she took off the screen; by then, the bees had calmed down and re-entered the hive.

This photo was taken after the swarm. Beekeeper Gemma Tarlach left Hive 2, on the left, alone because this was the delicate period of re-queening and if the bees are disturbed, they may blame the new queen and kill her (bees don't mess around). Hive 1, on the right, was growing and needed more space, so she added a couple of "honey super" boxes (on top of the two deeper brood boxes) to give them more space and also encourage them to stop thinking about swarming and instead spend their time making honey.

In another surprising development, another hive attacked Hive 1 in an effort to steal honey. These "robber bees" slaughtered many of the hive's bees in the process. It was another call for a "robber screen," which the beekeeper put on during the carnage. The foragers learned how to get in and out of the hive, but the robbers couldn't.

But most of the time bees are doing their job - pollinating. You can tell this bee is a baby because she's so fuzzy. Bees literally work their hair off as they age in summer.

Winter doesn't always stop them - these bees were out and about in the December sun. Those are crumbs of sugar, not ice, around them. A sugar brick broke as it was placed in the hive, and they were "helping clean up.

This is how hives look when winterized, wrapped in roofing felt (tar paper), with a quilting box and shim for winter feeding added atop the two brood boxes, plus a mouse guard at the entrance.

"Quilting boxes" with burlap, cedar chips and screened holes improve ventilation in the hive and reduce condensation in winter. Beekeeper Gemma Tarlach built these boxes herself.

This peek inside a hive shows the sugar brick sitting on top of the frames so the bees have something to eat if their honey stores run low.

For the beekeeper, here's a perfect full frame of honey.