YAY!!! Bees!!! And only 3 weeks late! Stinkin’ drought! |
This pic is a little fuzzy, but I couldn’t resist adding it! SO MANY BEES!!! |
We took them outside, scraped some crystallized honey into the hive, cracked open the top of their little carrier, removed the syrup can they came with, removed the queen and shook out the bees. It’s a pretty crazy experience to hold thousands of bees in your hands with all the buzzing they do!
We didn’t wear our protective gear this time since we’d read and heard that right now is the safest time to be around the hive because the bees have nothing to protect or fight for, so they’re pretty docile. They were completely chill. At one point I probably had about a hundred on the hand that was holding the Queen and they were very calm.
Then, we popped the cork on the Queens’ little cage so her workers can eat her out of her little prison and placed her in between two of the slats.
Tool Lady checking out the Queen |
The little silver rectangle you see is the clip to the Queens cage 🙂 |
The remaining bees trying to figure out what the hell is going on! |
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Finally, we took a seat across the yard from them, had a beer, ate a few hotdogs, and watched as they all started to chill out, explore, and drink some water from the bucket (with hay floating on top so they don’t drown themselves) we put next to their new home…we figured since we were drinking, they should, too 😉
Now, all we can do is wait, hope they accept their Queen and our hive and be patient with the backward beekeeping process. I figure in about 6 months to a year I’ll be able to post about our first harvesting of honey!!!
Cheers!!!
so great!