I have wanted bees for a long, long time.  We have talked about it quite a bit, but we have never really had a good place to keep them, or we didn’t have enough money to get stared.  There always seemed to be a reason to put it off another year.

Except now.

A good friend of ours talked Dadzoo into taking a bee keeping class this winter.  Dadzoo took the class, became interested and put in an order for a beehive and a packet of bees.  We are officially beekeepers now (Dadzoo will argue that there is a difference between “beekeepers” and “beehavers”)

Boo decided that she wanted to help with the bees, that she would “own” this part of Quail Run. When it was time to pick up the bee packet she came along, and quickly became friends with a rogue bee that wanted to hang around our packet.

Here is what four thousand bees look like.  The sound they all make together is amazing.

The evening of our pick up we placed the bees in their hive.

(this is the queen bee, I couldn’t get a good picture of her, in her little cage, there is a sugar plug that the queen and the workers will eat through to release her into the colony, this gives the colony extra time to accept her as their queen)

Note the lack of a bee suit or veils.  Dadzoo only got three stings, and Boo didn’t get a single one.  Bees only sting if they feel threatened, so moving slowly and quietly around the hive, even when they are this active and agitated, keeps the beekeepers from being stung much.

 Boo handling a bee on the drive home from picking up our packet.

The idea is that we will slowly build up until we have several hives, Boo would like to be able to produce enough honey to sell a little someday.