This Bee the Day

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He was ready to carry the whole project.   The bees weren’t arriving till mid afternoon… long after this pregnant girl has finished her gardening and cooking and cleaning…. right about the time I am thinking about putting my feet up and ignoring all other work (minus the business of fruit salad…of course).

The bees were to arrive over a month ago …and delay upon delay made them arrive on the hottest steamiest most pregnant day of the year.  As I zipped up my bee suit I could feel it stretch and the zipper slow around my navel.    We were both sweating long before i put on my boots and elbow high leather gloves.  I couldn’t just leave the man of my forever to do all this himself… aside from the fact that I was the one who met with the 47year beekeeper vet in a coffee shop and I knew how to read the napkin he scrawled  on his time tested way of installing the bees… aside from the fact that I am the one with the working book knowledge… aside from the 90* heat in bee suits… I mean..Come on… This is 80,000 bees!  I wanted the bragging rights on this too… humongously pregnant or not…. I wasn’t about to be left out.

Tomorrow we go out and release the queens… and take out the empty boxes.  Ole Stuart’s (from the coffee shop.  did you see his secret plans, I Instagrammed them of course so they are less secret, ahem) way of installing the bees has resulted in way less dead bees.  It was also very neat and tidy.  Suffice it to say that one napkin from Stuart is more valuable than most of my bee books and you tubes I have watched.  Granted this year was sweltering hot and pregnant… and last year was freezing and pouring rain.  So it may not be a fair comparison.

Look at us…we make a good team.

and then…

things got crazy….

but they eventually calmed down.