Behold! The Power of Bees

I knew that my bees were on their way from Texas. R. Weaver let me know that they shipped on Friday, May 2. So I was expecting them today, but not quite so early.

I couldn't sleep for some reason. About 5, I started tossing and turning, and by quarter to six, I gave up, made a pot of half-caff and a bowl of cereal, and started reading email. At 6:05, my cell phone rang. The number that came up on the display wasn't a familiar one. Wrong number, I thought.

"Hello, this is Lesli."

"This is the post office. Your bees are here."

"Thanks! What time do you open, so I can pick them up?"

"You can pick them up right now!"

So I did. The same woman who called brought them out to the loading dock for me, two three-pound packages with a big, wide, push cart all to themselves. No one wants to touch boxes of bugs. That's just the way it is.

I was back home by 6:30, with six pounds of pretty happy-looking bees. A few dead in the bottom of the cages, but not bad for a three-day trip from Texas. Otherwise, the girls are forming a fat, upside-down cone around the queen cage and syrup can, buzzing slightly, and no doubt impatient to stop being a swarm, and get down to the business of colony building.

Last time I bought package bees, I was still a smoker. I could appreciate the wax-and-wood smell of a hive, but I didn't notice then, as I did today, how the bees themselves smell in the package. I caught a whiff of lemon as I picked them up.

My Sweetie and I finished arranging their hives yesterday. He was good enough to haul some flat slabs of slate for me to use as hive stands. Last year, the ground heaved over winter and the hives ended up a bit askew. I'm hoping this will help.