Our Italian Bees Have Arrived at the Farmfeatured

We received a call from the Post Office at 3:00 PM on Saturday. The lady on the other side of the phone was somewhat frantic, “We have your delivery of bees. You need to come get this box now.”

Maybe she was allergic or maybe she had visions in her head of the box suddenly breaking open, sending a swarm of deadly bees throughout the post office. The bees stinging all the hard working postal employees relentlessly until they swelled up and bled out of their eyes. Regardless, Petra grabbed her keys and rushed out the door to pick up our bees and relieve this poor civil servant of her melissophobic concerns. We had been anxiously awaiting our new addition to the farm and were thrilled that they finally arrived.

When Petra arrived back home, she quickly set up the bee box that we bought and painted in a segregated part of our farm. I expected her to dress in protective gear with a massive bee hat and veil, but she didn’t bother with any of that. I know very little about bees and I asked her, “Aren’t you going to wear any protective gear?”

“No!”, she said, “I won’t need it.”

For years, I’ve been watching folks on television put on protective suits, gloves, and special headgear in order to handle bees. I was shocked when she ripped open the box and started pouring the bees into the hive like she was pouring ingredients into a mixing bowl. Admittedly, I was having the same visions as the lady from the post office was probably having.

The bees swarmed, but they were quite gentle. Although I had several dozen on me while Petra was making the transition over to the hive, none of them stung. Petra even moved the box with the queen over to the new bee box with her bare hands. Neither of us suffered any stings. It was a learning experience for me.

Petra and I checked on the hive this morning. Petra wanted to make sure that the queen had escaped the small box in which she was transported. The box is sealed with sugar and the workers can devour the sugar in order to free the queen. Instead of waiting for that process to be completed, Petra just opened the box and let the queen go in her new bee box.

We now have 5,000(ish) Italian Bees in a hive on our farm. We have a bag of wild flower seed and a large bag of clover seed that we are going to spread this week. We have already registered our hive with the Tennessee Department of Agriculture. If you happen to live in Tennessee and if you aren’t already aware of the services they offer bee keepers, we highly recommend visiting their site.

Please keep your fingers crossed that our bees survive these first few weeks and that we end the year with jars of sweet honey!