Once in a lifetime

There are some things that happen to you that are once in a lifetime events. This weekend, right in the middle of it, I had one of those events. I installed my first package of honeybees into my new hive. My friend Suzy was helping me and I said, "Suzy, this is a once in a lifetime thing." I stopped and appreciated what was happening and focused on being present with the experience.

I picked up my bees on Sunday morning. There were three pounds of them. 

I also get a queen in a cage. She is marked with a blue dot. There is a different dot for each year. She has a few attendants who are responsible for feeding her and protecting her.

One of the traditional methods is to spray the bees with sugar water, open the container, and shake them into the hive. I chose a different option. I simply opened the package and set the whole package in the hive and let them move to some of the empty frames. Originally, I did not put the queen cage in. However, after about an hour it was clear that the bees were confused and so I dropped the cage in. That seemed to help. After about three hours, the package was mostly empty. I removed it and replaced it with frames. 

Today, I opened up the hive to check the queen and she was out of the cage. I'll look next week to see how things are progressing. In the meantime I relish in the thought that this was a once in a lifetime event. An event that will happen again, but no longer the first time. 

Now, only time will tell if I'm a beekeeper.