A day with the wife of a bee hobbiest

I'm pretty sure that our neighbors think we are certifiably nuts. Last year Jason put two hives in our backyard. I wasn't really interested in the hobby until the fall when he brought me quart after quart of beautiful golden honey. Then suddenly I found myself visiting the bee hives hoping the bees sensed my gratitude for all their hard work.

I think we were lucky last year to have our first year be so successful. Things haven't been BAD this year....but definitely more exciting.

It all started when Jason put our chicken coop right next to the hives. (You can't see it, but the chicken run is attached behind the bees). Our bees had never caused us any problems so we didn't see any problem with this setup.

After a couple of months of fake spring/sometimes winter/could be an Idaho summer we noticed that the bees were getting really aggressive. (Noelle was stung and I was hunted down and terrorized by one that wouldn't get out of my hair until I turned the tables and water-boarded it). Obviously something was amiss in the hives.

Jason asked me to come and assist him while we investigated. We put Jadon down for a nap and then I tried to get in my bee suit. Yea embarrassing. You know you are really big when your bee suit doesn't fit anymore....anyway.

I've helped Jason before but the bees were pretty calm. This was a whole new fun-filled experience. The hive was imploding with unhappy bees. It was a little creepy having bees crash into my veil like I was the grill of a truck going sixty passed a mosquito reunion on the Benson Marina.

Jace drew the conclusion that the Queen was doing her thang quite right so we snuck in like the mafia and left a crime scene on that poor thing. A week later Jason replaced the Queen by putting a new Queen in a small box with some fondant. The little worker bees eat their way to her and in the process get used to her scent and don't attack her. (Amazing eh?)

I had to snag a picture of the chickens because they were under a bit of distress during the whole ordeal. A bee even started pestering one of our chickens and it flew the coop and went to live with the llamas. It was back in the coop later that night so I guess it forgave us for the trauma.

Once I got over the anxiety of having bees crawling all over me I found the process very interesting. Jason is a really good teacher and showed me how to find the queen, what the drones look like, how to tell if the queen has been laying...etc...

About thirty minutes in Jadon woke up and bellered from the deck for me. I had to walk around the house three times fully suited to get all the bees off to get to him. I put on a movie for him and went back out to help Jason. It wasn't long before Jadon needed me again. I don't know what he was asking for but when I finally got to him he had eaten about twenty cookies. I guess he got what he wanted.

Since switching out the queens our hives seem a bit nicer--though everyone is being more cautious as well. The neighbor kids haven't even tried to let our chickens out, so maybe the aggressive bee phase had a purpose.