I'm a beekeeper!

The girls have arrived and I'm hooked!  3 days into it and I can tell I'm going to love this. 

We picked up the bees in the screened boxes below the hives.   The tin cans held their sugar water.  No amount of shaking would free the last few bees and we had to leave them to find their own way out.  Sadly a few didn't make it out and I found them dead the next day.  How odd to be so sad over a few dead bees!

 Here's their view.  Not bad eh?  The field is surrounded by blackberries 

and there are blueberries behind the hives.

 The blue painters tape will come off in a few days.  It's covering the roof venting.  We didn't want the bees to be confused as to where they should enter the hives.

Apparently bees like dirty water.  They also drown very easily so you want to give them plenty of things to crawl on to get to the water.  It's best to have a very close water supply so they aren't tempted to use the neighbors pool or dog dish. 

I wish you could hear them, the sound is unreal.  It was amazing to stand in the middle of thousands of buzzing bees.   At one point they got a little agitated and the hum changed to a louder buzzing.  My heart was pounding and I hoped the suit would protect me.  It did, so far so good, lol.  No smoke was needed.  

Good bees!

 

The queen bee comes in a little wooden box with a candy plug in it.  The worker bees chew their way to the queen to free her.  Hopefully once she is free they know her scent and protect her rather than kill her.  As you can see by the empty box, she has been freed and hopefully is in the middle of the huddled bees where they are keeping her warm...and not killing her!  lol

Thank you Norm and Diane for letting us use your property!!