The bees have arrived!

Sorry for the radio silence this past week, it's been a crazy one!

Last Friday I took the day off work to travel with my boyfriend from my home in northwestern Ontario to a farm in southwestern Manitoba where I would be picking up a pair of honey bee nucs!

The day began early with feeding the chickens and moving the chicken tractor for my adolescent chicks. We grabbed some gas and hit the road. My Honda is involved in that huge recall going on (with the passenger side air bags) so we stopped in Kenora to get that all sorted then after picking up some coffee we continued west to Winnipeg!

We did the trip in stages because frankly I don't like sitting for 6 hours, so when we reached Winnipeg we went to a HUGE antique store and ate at the Old Spaghetti Factory (omg, can you say tortellini!! YUM!), made a quick stop at the BeeMaid store to get some bee supplies and we were off to Brandon!

We didn't do anything too spectacular in Brandon. After a long day of travel we were pretty zonked so we ordered in some pizza to the hotel room and relaxed.

Cute little things they are!

By noon the next day we were out at the Bygarski Honey Farm talking with Bill about bees and everything we could think of to do with them. We loaded up between 20,000 and 40,000 bees (in nuc boxes!) and headed home.

The drive home was (thankfully) uneventful with only about a dozen or so bees escaping from the boxes (apparently they can do that!). They were put in their appropriate location and waited for a friend and member of our local beekeepers association to come out on Sunday to help install them into the hives.

Even installing the hives was uneventful (but fun, even for someone like me who has no bee experience and is pretty scared of getting stung!). Tim showed me the ropes, we even spotted the queens in the fray, and that was it!

By the end of the day all the dandelions in the area had been well pollinated and the bees were settled into their new homes.

speedy little guy!

So the bees have been home almost a week now, so far no stings, I'm hosting a birthday BBQ for my mum on Sunday so it'll be interesting to see how the new livestock gets along with guests, open drinks and food!