Meet The Bees!

They came!  

12,000 little worker bees and drones all in this little box.

And Your Royal Majesty (the queen) in her own little throne room.  She is enclosed in this cage and it is sealed with a candy plug.  When the bees eat through the plug, she is released into the hive.  This takes about 3 days or so. 

Glad I had my notes from bee keeping class!  

Farmerboy using his hive tool to open the 2nd box of bees.  There is a jar of sugar water in there to feed them.

As you can tell we didn't have a lot of gear.  I have one glove, Jes has the other.  Some kids have a bee brush, some don't.  As it turns out, it's much easier to work the bees without gear.  Really I had no idea this would draw such a crowd or I would've given over my hat.  I feel like a bad mom!  But nobody was scared of them and everybody was careful. 

A lot of these bees will not sting because they are drones (boy bees) and drones don't sting.  Worker bees (girls) will only sting for 2 reasons.  

#1.  To protect the hive. 

#2.  If they feel they are in danger. 

Since these are new hives the bees had nothing to protect.  Josh got stung trying to brush a bee out of the bee brush and Jess got stung when the bee got caught in his shoe.  They were both fine with it and I'm glad they aren't scared.  

So far this has been so much fun!  Since we are such newbies I'm really concerned about killing them by overlooking something important.  I've already called a local bee man for help with queen questions and I figure these bee people will be glad when I finally get the hang of this and stop calling.  He basically told me to back off and leave them alone for 10 days until they get used to things.  

And I'm like, "Really?  You mean you don't open the hive and peek in 3 times a day to see what they are doing?"  

Apparently not.  

So for now, I'm just laying low and feeding them sugar water until we have more things come into bloom and they can forage for themselves.    I've already had to buy new lids with internal feeders because my external DIY feeder was feeding the wasps.  

I have the 10 days marked on my calendar.  In the meantime, I'm watching Youtube videos on hive inspections and how to light your smoker without catching the whole place on fire and having a bad day.