Royalty Here At Home

At 10:47 this morning the UPS man arrived with our Beehighness and her Beeladies-in-waiting. After looking at that little box of bees, I felt better about the fact that after two attempts, we never spotted the queen.

It would have taken some serious study with my high powered cheaters on to have figured out which one is which.  Thankfully, in lieu of  a tiara, Beehighness is sporting a dot.

So, I read on some forum that a guy had tried over twenty essential oils and found that bees love anise oil sugar water.  So I track some down and fill a spray bottle with anise syrup, concoct smoking material from cotton, dried grass and cardboard, don the bandanna, neck wrap, cucumber peels, the whole nine yards for day three. 

Yesterday,  I got stung on my thigh, nearly inner thigh through my heavy canvas pants.  Well, I got stung a lot, but I had doubled gloved and between that and those 20 lb armor-all jackets, no stingers got through.  I guess I'm never going to be glad to be stung, but I was a bit concerned about it after the massive face swelling of my last sting.  Just a red, itchy puffy place on my leg.  I'm guessing stings on cartilage/bone react differently. Let me just say, this last sting was miles from any bone or cartilage.

Anyway, I changed to a baggy pair of grey sweat pants and put a pair of skinnies underneath for good measure. This time Handy Man got stung through his pants.  He hardly reacts at all.

We went back to the box we divided yesterday and went through both, but still could not find a queen. So we brushed the bees off the comb, put the new queen in the deep, checked through all the other boxes and got rid of any drone and queen cells.  The hive is much calmer this evening.  I'm praying they'll accept this gentle queen.  Do you see the white blobs at end of the cage. That is candy.  The bees inside use it to feed the queen. She can't feed herself.  The outside bees eat it as well. Hopefully, by the time they reach the queen, they will have accepted her.

It's funny, though it is terribly hot in that outfit and bees are leaving trails of their entrails all over you and are buzzing right on your veil in front of your face, you just sort of get in flow and forget them and get the job done.

Handy Man didn't double glove and his gloves were soaked. Water ran out of my inner surgical gloves when I pulled them off.  Have mercy, between those jackets and having the BeeHighness sent First Class in her private jet, any honey we get from this hive will be liquid gold.