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I have really fond memories of growing up with my Grandfather (my Mom's Dad) and my Dad having bees. My Grandfather had bees for as long as I can remember, up until he passed away. I can remember attending the Oregon State Fair, where he was exhibiting his bees and honey and trying to locate the queen in his display. I can also remember extracting honey with my Dad and can remember the scent of wax and honey when we did that.

So I mentioned to my Mom about some hives down the road and how they looked as if they hadn't been attended in bit. So she asked the farmer across from the field whose hives they were. And from there we ended up purchasing two hives and two packages of bees from "the Honey Lady". She sells her honey at the local Farmer's Markets.

The bees showed up on Sunday, so I picked up the hives and the bees Sunday afternoon. And then I got to apply theory to action. I have great memories of honey bees as a child, and no experience as an adult!

The bees are shipped in a wire cage, with a can of sugar solution that acts as the stopper to their cage too. The queen is also in the cage, but she's in her own little wire cage, within the main cage.

Aren't they beautiful!!

I originally had Than with me when I picked up the bees, but found out that Than is not real fond of bees. So I swapped kids on the way back and Collin joined me to help put the hives together and install the bees. Here we're unloading the supers.



We set them up on a pallet under a crab apple tree that I remodeled on Sat. (see Mom's blog)

Collin was a great help.

Here he's putting grass in the entrance, this slows the bees down the first 24 hrs so that they don't all just fly away as soon as I put them in the hive!

The hives are used, the lady's bees disappeared for some unknown reason. So she sold me two hives with frames. Here we're checking the frames to see what all is one them. She gave me several frames loaded with honey, so I don't have to worry about feeding them supplemental sugar water while they're getting established.

This is one of the frames loaded with honey.

And now it's time to put theory in action.....you spray the bees while they're in the package with sugar water, which keeps them from flying when you put them in the hive.

So guys are your ready? Hmmmm......I think they look wet enough........here goes.......

Here I'm pulling the can out so I can dump the bees into the hive.

The lady said that you can really spray them down and really bang on the cage to get them out. Sounds easy doesn't it? Yeah, not so much. Here I'm trying to get last ones out...

It didn't go so well.....but the good news is that they eventually left on their own later. Here I'm sliding the queen's cage out of the package.

Here's a close up of the queen's cage. The workers chew their way through a candy cork and release her, once they're installed in the hive. I hang the cage inside the hive and they take it from there. I hope....

One down, one to go.....

Here are the bees, installed in the hive, before I add the last frames to close up the hive.

One last look.....

And we're done. For the moment. Tomorrow I get to open up the hive and see if all went as planned and the queen is out of her cage and the bees are doing OK. Then every ten days, if all is going well, I get to check on them for the next month or so.

Then the end plan is that we'll be able to pull some honey this fall and enjoy it this winter. I'll keep you posted.