Drama Queens

This week, our bees arrived! A good friend, Mark Lee, is helping us along the way. He's a bee expert, an experienced tree farmer, and and all around fascinating, good guy. Melissa and Sean are doing a sort of partnership/apprenticeship: teaming up with him to keep bees at our place and our farm, process honey in Mark's certified kitchen, and help sell/trade the honey! Melissa met Mark while doing bee research for the University, and now their relationship has evolved to get us into the "beesniess". Oh, my.

Here Mark is helping Sean with the bee delivery. We got 5 hives for our Camp Pleasant land and 5 hives for the farm. They come in the small boxes that Mark has set in front of him, and they are then put into the frame boxes on the left.

Melissa dumps the bees into their new home! Some people might not believe it, but if you are calm and peaceful, the bees have no troubles with you and will not sting you.

Melissa, whose name literally means "bee", beams as she holds a small box with a queen bee.


And Sean shows off his favorite drone.

The bees at the farm were happily foraging on the fields of dandelion the next day. But some drama insued at Camp Pleasant, where one queen "escaped" from the hive and the swarm followed her! Melissa tries to find the queen, which is just a bit larger than the drones and worker bees:

When the queen is nowhere to be found in the box, its assumed that she is nestled on the crate, in a big pile of buzzing bees. Melissa tries to capture the pile of bees:

At this point the bees are a bit confused about what is going on, and buzzing wildly all around us. I had never been in anything like it! Its like you are in another world, ruled totally by the buzzing group movement that is the hive. Its really exhilerating.
When the attempt to move the queen didn't seem to work, the hive box was set right next to the little swarm, with hopes that the queen would enter the hive again and the drones and workers would follow:

Later in the day, Mark came over and helped move the queen into the hive, by hand. So far, so good: all the queens are home and safe, and the workers are out foraging the spring wildflowers and trees. Never a dull moment. . .!