The Secret Life of Bees (Part 1)

As if we don't have enough craziness in our lives--- Byron has, for a while, wanted to get a few boxes of bees going on our property. He's even looked into buying a "hive" of honey bees and having them shipped to our house. (Really, they do that and it's about a hundred bucks). We can save our money. This afternoon, our neighbor called us over to look at a swarm in his tree. Voila--- free honey bees. We threw together a make-shift beekeeper costume. Whaddya think of my handiwork? Ski boots, snowmobile pants, gloves, some netting, my old hat from Haiti and a roll of good ol' duct tape-- ta da! Anyway, under the careful coaching of Grandpa Bodily (did you know he used to raise bees in California?), Byron was able to put the football sized swarm into a cardboard box without getting a single sting!!! Grandpa Bodily estimates they captured about 20 thousand bees tonight. The box was HEAVY and boy, oh boy, you should have heard the ranting and raving of those bees safely inside the box. They weren't a happy bunch.

This is Bob-- it was his house and his tree. We very smartly watched from a distance. (I got there late-- after it was done).

Now that phase one is done and the bees are in a box in my garage (I'll be parking outside until they are gone tomorrow), Grandpa Bodily and Byron have headed over to my friend Susan's house to pick up a couple of bee hives. She happens to have two extra. Sure seems like we are meant to have bees. I hope we know what we are getting in to!