Happy Bee Day!

The bees are here! The bees are here!

Monday Morning I thought I'd give Fred Selby a call to see if those bees were getting close to ready. Well, what to my surprise I was told to come on down that afternoon for two packages ... otherwise I'd have to wait another week! Of course I was thrilled and went right down there to get the bees. Here's a picture of Fred carrying my bees to the truck I borrowed (Thank you, John!)

I was told to bring the bees home and set them in a shady spot until dark. Then, after dark I was to pour those bees into my boxes and release the queen down into the frames and watch her go in. Apparently their introduction period was over and they had already accepted their queen. Here I am setting them in the shade.

So, I arranged two boxes before hand. I have the "Red Queen" (Margaret) and the "White Queen" (Elizabeth). Margaret lives in the "bee barn" and Elizabeth lives in the urban graffiti bee ghetto.

Here's one of the boxes of bees just after opening:

Here's a photo of the girls settling in to the Bee Barn:

Although I did wear a bee suit as precaution, I did not wear gloves and had fairly open shoes for the event. I didn't bring a flashlight or a bee brush. Why? Because I'm a genius, that's why! So, the sun ducked down pretty quickly and I was out there unable to see much. But Rex, my photographer,provided enough light to allow me to temporarily see what I was doing until I was thoroughly blinded by the flash. Michael ran out with a light after all and helped me a bit. Nobody else had on protective gear and we miraculously got it all done without any stings or major catastrophe. Well, Valerie thought she might have been stung on the foot. But it wasn't a bad sting. And, really? Bare feet? Carrying your rat? Girl, puhleeeze! So, Tuesday I ran out to check on my bees. It was pretty quiet in the morning. But by the afternoon I did notice something interesting. Elizabeth's hive had little bees coming in and out of the reduced entrance taking their orientation flights about to see exactly where they were. Margaret's hive had what looked like a bar room brawl going on out front. I'm sorry I didn't bring a camera to capture these images. But let me describe them. Then entire entrance was covered with bees. Some of them were fuzzy and yellow like the ones I deposited the night before. Some were bigger with a little more black on their bottoms. And there seemed to be some real grappling going on. There were two on one, three on one, three on three, hugging, pushing, climbing, stinging, buzzing. It was crazy. The hive even sounded different. There was a lot of activity coming and going from the reduced entrance. And there were lots of other bees scoping out up beneath the outer cover and looking for chinks in the armor. By Tuesday evening I determined my bees were being robbed and that I needed to do something about it. I had feeders in the entrances of both hives. But the one at this hive was leaking. I guess that tipped off the hooligans in the neighborhood that these guys were loaded and that their bee tea needed to be liberated. So, I took the feeder off the hive and put a new entrance reducer on the front. Then I piled some wood chips in front of the little reduced entrance. Do I have any photos of this stuff? No. The camera card is full. The battery is dead. And I was just a little too panicked to snap any photos. As of this morning it looks like there are still some bees that want in. But it's not the craziness I had yesterday. Of course, I don't know how long my girls can get on without their sweet elixer since they need to be building comb and laying brood. In fact, I hope the robbers didn't kill Margaret! In the mean time, I did find some top feeders. In a couple of days I will put those on. Hopefully that will be a more secure environment. Can you imagine moving to a new house and being robbed your first day there? This may become a blog for "what not to do" while keeping animals and plants! Jeeze, Louise! With that thought, I leave you with the Bee Keeper Super Hero photo: