I just completed my community college beginning beekeeping class - 3 hours of classroom instruction and 1 1/2 hours of bee hive maintenance demonstration at a suburban backyard apiary. I discussed this class in an earlier post: Backyard Beekeeping: Back to School. The field trip to the apiary was this past weekend. The apiary supports the instructor's business, Bridgetown Bees, which sells bee hive NUCs (small self-contained bee hive starters (nucleus) with fully populated frames), bee packages (bees without the frames - queen, workers, and drones), and bee products (honey, wax candles).
At one point he had 80 populated hives and there were dozens active in his backyard. He said it takes about an acre of forage to support one hive and that bees tend to stay within a 2 miles radius of their hive - so, he must be servicing all of his neighbors 
. The average hive honey production in the Portland metro area is about 40-45 lbs per year, but he said that one year he had a hive that produced 360 lbs!
Workers returning to the hive with pollen.
Extracting a Langstroth frame from a box that he uses to raise bees for NUCs. A Langstroth frame is a full 4 sided frame, usually with a backing sheet that bees use to build the comb. On the bench is a hybrid frame that he uses to create NUCs with Warre frames which only have a top bar. Bees create a free hanging comb on the Warre frame, as they would in nature. The hybrid frame allows him to use the same box for both types of frames.
A couple of short videos:
Workers with pollen
Bee taking a breather on white Clematis flower
The "Save the Bees Challenge" was a great learning opportunity for me. I wish that I had been able to take this class before the challenge as I now have a lot more insight into how a honeybee hive operates and how a local beekeeper deals with pests. And only one person was stung... (not me).
I'm still debating whether or not to have a hive of my own. My wife also has to agree...
But, I did buy honey (2.2 lbs) for Mother's Day 
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