I'm a Beekeeper!

I've been waiting for this day for months. Since September, when I began attending Beekeepers meetings with Crossroads Beekeepers in Effingham. I drove an hour north this morning at 5am to pick up 1 hive and 1 nuc of bees. I was supposed to be getting 2 nucs, which are like mini fully operational hives, but instead got 1 full hive, and 1 nuc. The Queens from the other nucs didn't take, so the nucs didn't work out. Nuc's normally come in a smaller box, like a 1/2 size box, but this guy just decided to put them in a full size deep box. Good thing about that is, I now have more equipment!

 Since the guy didn't have 2 nuc's ready for me, he offered me one of his hives, which he already added a 2nd deep onto, for a slightly higher price. I wanted more bees, so I took him up on the offer. He had them ready to go and loaded them in the truck when I got there. There was a few bees on the outside of the box, "I was like, will those bees just hang out there on the way home or what?" The guy was like, uh... they'll go somewhere I guess... Beginner beekeeper questions.

  

 I already had everything set up and ready to go since I thought I was getting 2 nuc size boxes and would have to transfer frames to my equipment. I had to pack up my stuff (Good thing is I now have extra equipment, meaning I'm ready to add more hives in the future) and set out the new stuff. They don't look quite as nice as my freshly painted hive boxes, but they will be fine I guess.

Bees hovering outside the hive, the entrance is blocked off by wire mesh.

The bee yard after I removed my 2 hives and before adding the new ones.

Half of the wire mesh removed. Bees came pouring out when I removed the entrance covers! Angry, pissed off bees!

 I set the boxes on the stand, removed the tarp straps, and made sure everything was ready to go. Since it was raining today, I couldn't remove the tops to have a look see, so all I had to do was remove the wire mesh from the front entrances. Hmm... There's a lot of bees there, soooo... I finally took my bee brush and softly brushed them off the wire, then grabbed the wire and pulled it out. Man the bees were furious with all the moving around and what not. They were pelting me straight in the veil with their stingers! It was slightly unnerving! They calmed down a bit, and after watching them a bit longer, I packed things up and headed to drop the truck off that I had borrowed. When I got out of the truck, a bee landed on my arm (no longer had a bee suit on) and stung me! I quickly removed the barb, but the damage was done. 12 hours later, as I type, my forearm is still swollen. Little stinker!

When I got home, I told Natalie I was going to take a shower, cause I was feeling kind of itchy... When I got undressed, I counted 6 stings on my legs. The little buggers were flying at me butt first, but their stingers were getting stuck in my bee suit, and must have been kind of grazing my legs or something, because I had 6 clearly defined little welts on my legs.

The good thing is, when I go in to look at them, I will have my smoker and that will help relax them. They should also be settled in to their new homes, so that should help as well. Probably a good thing I didn't have Cayle out there with me today. Although when we went over later, he wanted to go check them out and see how they were doing. From observing the outside of the hive, it seemed like they had settled quite a bit. As soon as we get a sunny day, I'll head over to check things out.

For now, I'm just pumped to have my bees! It's been many hours of work, cleaning, painting, learning to get to this point. I'm looking forward to this new hobby and learning as much as I can!

Never thought I'd say this... I'm a Beekeeper!

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