Bees!

Rus has been wanting to get bees for years. Given just enough free time to build a top bar hive and a nudge from his brother in law (which included the phone number for a bee-seller), Rus was in the game! Back at the end of March we went on a date to pick up our "package," roughly 3000 bees. The queen was packaged separately in a tiny box with mesh around it, clipped inside the bigger box so as to be with but shielded from the rest of the bees. (They do that so that the bees can acclimate to their new queen and not kill her before they have the chance to accept her.)
Because of a snow storm we were told to keep the bees in our garage until it stopped snowing. They hung out for a few days...I found the incessant hum a little disturbing. Eventually Rus took them out to their new home.

He was able to put them in their new home without incident, like a pro! A can of sugar water was in the package and doubled as the plug. Rus put that in the hive, along with the queen in her little box. After a few days he replaced the cork plug in the queen's box with a marshmallow. She ate it from one side, and the bees from the other side until she was free, now the accepted queen. All the bees went right to work - we were amazed at how quickly they built their honeycomb!

The kids built Rus a stand so he could hang up the bars to look at what was going on with the bees. It is really fun to check on the bees and look for the queen. This does seem to be a gentle hive - when they are smoked they are very mild and we have stayed free from bee stings for the most part.

We have also enjoyed the honey! The very best way is to eat it with warm bread, of course!