Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet

Ready for their 2 hour car ride home

The bees are here! And I am an awkward, (very) novice beekeeper. After a 4+ hour round trip to pick them up (note for next time - ha - probably best to have done it alone, so that Silas could have stayed home, but I digress. . . .), Tres and I are now the proud keepers of 2 hives of Carniolan honey bees. They were super buzzy when we first picked them up, but quieted right down in the car. Once we got home, Tres and I worked together to transfer them into the hives and it went quite smoothly. I really wasn't sure how I was going to feel about bees buzzing around me in that number (it seems like it might get a person's panic response going), but having the full suit made me feel surprisingly safe, if not quite confident. Mostly, I'm afraid I'm going to crush them and there are so many in one place at any given time, that it's very challenging manipulating the hive without doing so.

Today I went in for the first time by myself, to check on their combs and see how they were doing. It was a little more exciting as just one person - I'm definitely not very facile with the hives yet and was pretty clunky and slow and it's a lot of bees seemingly everywhere you want to be - but it was super neat to see all the work they'd been doing. There were lots of little combs and a couple good sized ones (4" x 6"?) in each hive and, most excitingly, they were all pointed in the right direction, so I didn't have to remove or move any. I've seen a few bees venturing out around the yard too, which means they're starting to seek out and gather pollen, so it looks like things are going well. Hopefully we'll get some consistently warmer and less windy weather for them soon too. Tres planted a bunch of lavender today, I bet they'll enjoy those flowers when they bloom. I wish that I could get more photos, but I suspect that that time is a long way off. It's enough right now to open up and inspect the hives while trying to disturb them as little as possible.

The goofy novice beekeeper