The excitement around here last month was honeybees arriving in the beginning of May!

We got a call from the post office telling us it was time to come pick up our bees. When I told her, my grandma got such a kick out of the fact that our honeybees were arriving in the mail. I did too. (Then she told me stories about my great grandpa having hives on the family farm, and I couldn’t believe that my great grandma actually grew tired of honey because they had so much of it!) The honeybees arrived right as the apple trees were blooming, so there were plenty of blossoms for them to enjoy.

When I first met Jeff, he had honeybees on the homestead here. He shared some of the honey with me and I had never tasted anything like it before, it was incredible. The only problem was that the bears kept destroying the hives, so that put an end to things for a time. Since then, we’ve talked about having bees here again, but knew we would need to do some serious bear-proofing first. If you chat with locals, they all have different ideas and tricks for how to do that.

Well… Jeff, B, and I decided to go for it this year. Spring is the time to order bees and we didn’t want to wait another year to get started. We agreed that we wanted to build a cage for around the hives. Just when we were looking into what we would need to buy to do that project, my dad and stepmom told us they had some fencing panels they no longer needed and wondered if we wanted them. Yes! The panels turned out to be exactly what we were needing. They were perfect for the project, and the timing could not have been better. We were grateful!

When they visited last month, my dad and stepmom also got to be a part of helping us get the hive assembled. It was a great group project, and I think we were all dreaming of honey while we worked on it. 🙂

As you long time readers know, B has always had a fascination with insects. Ants, praying mantises, spiders, termites, butterflies, bees… you name it, he is very interested in them. Beekeeping has turned out to be such a great hobby for him! He loves it so much, and so does Jeff, and now it’s something they really enjoy doing together.

Jeff cut out some plexi-glass pieces for a viewing window so they can easily check on the hive without disturbing them, and then put the cover back over the little window. I get constant progress reports, which I really enjoy. And I like visiting the bees too. Our family has learned so much already, and can’t wait to expand. We’ve been dreaming about bees for such a long time, I’m so glad we decided to go for it and get started this year!