We finally did it!  We picked up our honey bees from R. Weaver Apiaries on Saturday morning.  They came in their own little wooden screen box for transport.   We put them in the backseat of the truck with our 2 year old granddaughter, Finley and headed to the farm.  Caution:  hold the box by the wooden ends and not the screen side!

The queen is hanging in the middle of the box in her own tiny little cage giving off pheromones so the other bees will start to accept her.

Here’s the bottom box of the hive getting ready for the bees.  We removed 4 to 5 of the frames to make room for the bees.  There’s the bee brush to move the bees around without crushing them.  There’s my gloves that protects my hands and arms.  And there’s the bottle of sugar water to feed the little guys until they start collecting pollen.

Here’s the last picture I took for a few minutes.  Did you know you cannot use the iphone camera with leather gloves on? I know! It surprised me too!  However, when Mike took the lid off the bee box to remove the queen – they were really ticked off.  They came zooming out of that box flying around and I was SO GLAD I had on a bee hat, veil, leather gloves, and Velcro around my ankles so they did not fly up my pants legs!   I promise, every possible bee available opening was covered up!

After we hung the queen in her little cage in the bottom box, we sprayed the bees with sugar water to make them sticky – it makes shaking them out of the little box into their new home a little easier.  That’s right, you turn the small box upside down and SHAKE them into the big box on top of the queen.    They love her and groom her and feed her until they can get her out of her little tiny cage.  It has a candy plug at the bottom that they have to eat through to get to her.

Whatever bees don’t come out of the box when you shake it, they get to climb out on their own.  So you put the box on the ground and somehow they figure out how to escape out that great big hole in the top and get in the big box.

This is the entrance for the bees for the first couple of weeks.  It’s right there.  See it?  Ok, it’s “bee” hind that clump of bees.  Oh come on – it’s the first pun today!

Here’s the final picture of the hive.  The top honey super also has frames and there’s a lid on top of that which makes it really heavy.  However, a couple of weeks ago something knocked the top lid off a couple of inches and several red wasps decided it was the perfect place to live.  Mike had the honor of getting rid of them – without wasp spray.  You can’t spray poison into a bee hive!

OK, one last picture.  I’m happy, happy, happy that this experience is over.  This is the happy face of a new “bee-keeper.” 

Maybe I shouldn’t be allowed to take my own picture anymore….