Managing your own personal honey machines can be a dangerous endeavor, so we thought. Last week, John went to turn our composter and noticed some bees flying into it. Lots of them. After opening up the composter and seeing hundreds upon hundreds of bees, we quickly figured out we had a problem. Over the course of a few days, we called a variety of local resources to get the bees removed and found that it was going to cost us hundreds of dollars. We could of sprayed some toxic spray on these little buzzing insects, but that would of meant that we would of ruined our healthy compost and the actual compost bin would of been contaminated with evil chemicals AND we would of killed a precious resource.
So like how I do most of my research, I posted my problem on Facebook. Within minutes, I had lots of suggestions and a solution! One of my friends’ dad is a bee keeper and was in search for a new hive. We both became solutions to a problem. So we didn’t have to kill the bees and we learned how to maintain our own bee hive for when they come back. It was so cool to watch and looked really easy to handle.
When he opened up the compost bin we couldn’t believe how BIG the honeycomb was! It was so intricate and beautiful. Our bee keeper friend was able to not get attacked because the smoke confuses them. Pretty cool! 
There was probably a thousand bees in there!
One of the most crucial things in getting rid of a bee hive is finding the Queen Bee. Once you have her in captivity, then all the rest follow.
Some of the other bees release pheromones to all the other bees by sticking their little booties up in the air. Soon after, all the other bees started flocking to their new home.
We kept the boxed hive on the compost bin for a whole day. When our bee keeper friend came back the next day almost, all the bees were in the box producing away and making lots of honey! 
So the next time the bees come back, John and I are going to try to learn how to care for these guys. Did you know that one colony produces 1-2 gallons of honey a year! I can just imagine having my own honey. Talk about local!
wow Amber!! I remember seeing your post on FB about this, so cool that it worked out so well! I was so surprised when you showed the open “hive” the comb was HUGE!! Glad everything worked out! 🙂
OMG! Thank goodness you were able to get rid of them. Oh, and thank goodness I wasn’t at the Fox Pad when all of this was going on, because I am deathly afraid to bees! Seriously1 I turn into a five year old.
I love this! What a great lesson and happy solution.
This is so fascinating! And good for you for finding a humane way to rid yourself of the bees.
The crazy thing about that amount of honey is knowing how many bees are IN that colony to make that gallon or two — I was in this natural foods store in Asheville over the weekend and saw this little honey bee captured in a jar of a teaspoon of honey and it had a card that said “One honeybee produces a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime” — or something to that effect ….so there are LOTS of bees making that bulk happen 🙂