My "art" (I'm an amateur beekeeper)

That's the queen bee. She lays all of the eggs in the hive and encourages the overall production of the hive

Yeah I was about to ask if it was a queen or a drone

I've been doing it for 2 years now! I have been working with another keeper who has been doing it for about 10 years. Together we have 3 hives but I hope to add another hive this spring!

That's so neat! I hope it works out for ya. We need more bees! Keep up the excellent work!

But they're friendly and hang around on flowers and make honey ;-;

They’d really do anything else than sting you, unless you attack them

i was like 3-4 and got surrounded by what seemed to be the whole swarm possibly attracted to my yellow shirt since then i have had a phobia of them

Make sure to support your local beekeepers!

Haven't encountered any yet. This past season there was an outbreak of beetles that needed to be faught off. Besides that nothing too damaging has happened to the current hives

One of our hives lost its queen very early on in the spring season. Luckily we were able to integrate a new nuc into the remaining hive

It really depends on how early in the season you can start and how many frames you block off for just honey. We averaged about 40 pounds of honey from the three hives this season

Wow, that's pretty good. Do you keep all of that? Or sell it at markets?

I give a lot away to family and friends but the rest is sold at local markets to try and recoup any additional costs we may have had

Good on you! I appreciate your work, local and reliable produce is important