Today I am thankful for...
-my husband the beekeeper.
This past Saturday we picked up a package of honey bees. We had to drive 2.5 hours one way to pick them up. I was nervous about riding in the car with them, but luckily it was an incident free trip. I was working on my new knitting project and it kept my mind off the frenzied buzzing. While the little babe loves seeing bees in books and makes an adorable buzzing sound while moving her little finger around in the air, she seemed a little unsure of the real thing. Maybe for next year we'll have to look into getting her a toddler sized bee suit.
My husband used to have lots of hives at various locations around the county. We had 9 hives in our backyard at one point. However, as other things in our life took more time, the bees were left to do their own thing. Over several winters, all of them died. Last summer was our first summer without the smell of honey in the yard and the constant sound of buzzing during the day. I decided that we should get more bees this year and hopefully we will be able to harvest some honey in the Fall. Just because you keep bees does not guarantee that you will get honey. If you want to give your bees a chance at surviving the winter, you have to leave them with enough honey to feed on all winter. Here are pictures from our day. There are a lot of pictures, but I thought that most people do not have the opportunity to see honey bees up close, so here is your chance without the risk of getting stung! Warning - you may start hearing a buzzing noise if you look at these for too long!
Lots of packages of bees that people pre-ordered. They use the vacuum to suck the stray bees off of the outside of the packages.
The metal cans contain sugar water, which the bees feed on while in transit.
Shaking her bum in the air, doing the bee dance. She is telling other bees "Come here, the queen is in here!"
The little babe entertained herself nicely in the backyard while my husband was getting the hive set-up.
Most of the time my husband does not use a veil, but since the bees were a bit cranky from traveling and because they do not have an established home yet, he decided to be cautious.
Spritzing them with sugar water to help distract them from what he is about to do.
The queen bee is inside that small box. The honey bees want to be near the queen, so you put the queen in the hive first and then...
shake as many bees as possible into the top of the hive, then dump the rest of the bees on the ground in front of the hive entrance.
They will then hopefully crawl into the hive towards the queen.
All those bees crawling, flying, and buzzing, trying to find their queen, and my husband did not get stung once. He is calm and cool, unlike myself. I start swearing and panicking if I hear one get too close. I hope the little babe takes after him when it comes to keeping calm.
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