Excellent photos of a beekeeper

The photos were not taken by me. They are photos of me.

Still, they are excellent.

I was honored to host a couple of University of Tennessee students out at the farm last week: Demetric Banahene and Evan Wilson. They came out to shoot some pictures for an article about my beekeeping activities in Scoop magazine, a publication produced each semester by journalism students at UT.

Demetric and Evan said they had never seen the inside of a beehive before (as I hadn't before I started keeping bees), and they didn't really know what to expect.

I explained that bees generally aren't out to sting or attack. They have a job to do and that is to make honey and keep the hive alive. If they feel threatened or unduly interrupted in their work, they will take offense. But for most of the time, they just try to go about their business.

One of the things that helps them stay calm is smoke. Exactly why this is the case is the object of a number of theories, but it does seem to work. I was glad that I was able to get the smoker going when the guys came out, and it will puffing fully when we walked out to the hives.

Demetric and Evan wore no protection at all, while I was suited up fully.

Once I opened up the hive and put a little smoke on the bees, the guys eased up toward the apiary and began shooting.

I spent a good bit of time going through a couple of the hives. I wanted to show them what the comb on a frame looked like, and I was also curious to see how the bees were doing. I was able to find some capped and uncapped honey to show the photographers, as well as several frames that were covered with bees.

Demetric sent me a few pictures of the pictures they took (they said they had more than 100), and I am posting a few of them in the text here. All of the pictures he sent can be found in the slideshow below or at Picasaweb.