Beekeeping lesson with Roussos

Beekeeping lesson with Roussos with the Samaria Experience Roussos enjoyed having a beekeeping lesson in June with Kristin K Pedersen. It is a nice experience to share knowledge and love for the bees! Thank you so much for the nice fotos!

The bee colony from above. The location of the beehive is in the old village of Agia Roumeli, calmly situated between the mountains.

The bee colony

Roussos uses the smoker to calm the bees down. The smoke does not work as a sedative. Instead it signals to the bees that thereis fire somewhere so they are preoccupied with finding it instead of attacking.

Roussos can usually tell just from opening the beehive how the bees are doing. If they are healthy, active, how they are performing and if they need support.

Roussos is checking out the first honeycomb.

Bees buisily working along.

The queen bee. You can spot her from the colour on her back but a trained eye can find her from her bigger size and slightly different shape.

Roussos is checking out a new honeycomb.

The bees have started to build their wax hexagons on the new honeycomb.

The calm surrounding of Agia Roumeli.

And ofcourse…goats.

Recycling the beeswax 2015

Recycling the beeswax 2015 Stavros and Giannis are here seperating the old blackened and ofcourse empty honeycombs from their wooden panels and preparing them to be recycled. The honeycombs will be melted in a steampress and then collected. Roussos will go through this procedure two times in order for the wax to be filtered correctly. This way we will receive clear beeswax. We will then mold the beeswax into fresh wax sheets that will be inserted into the new pannels and serve as teh base or the new honeycombs. In sprin the bees will start building their new cells on top of these wax sheets and then later on fill them with honey.

Recycling the beeswax 2015

Recycling the beeswax 2015
Stavros and Giannis are here seperating the old blackened and ofcourse empty honeycombs from their wooden panels and preparing them to be recycled. The honeycombs will be melted in a steampress and then collected. Roussos will go through this procedure two times in order for the wax to be filtered correctly. This way we will receive clear beeswax. We will then mold the beeswax into fresh wax sheets that will be inserted into the new pannels and serve as the base or the new honeycombs. In sprin the bees will start building their new cells on top of these wax sheets and then later on fill them with honey.