Welcome to the unit. Grab your hive, we're going to the field.

There was a saying in the Army that rang true more often than not, (even before 9/11).  "Welcome to the unit.  Grab your ruck. We're deploying to Iraq / Afghanistan / the field."  And so it was with the bees.  They show up and not 24 hours from when they had left their home in Georgia, they were deployed to their new homes in our fields.

I believe the statement that if the bees and other insect pollinators were wiped out then humans would have precious few months before the food crops that we relied on would be in trouble.  I also believe that the 'Colony Collapse Disorder' is a very real threat and is due in large part to BigAg's pesticide and errant genetic breeding programs for both bees and plants.  I also feel that you can never really have enough pollinators on a primarily open pollinated vegetable farm.  Soooooooo...back in early March I ordered two packages of bees.  A package is basically 3-15k worker bees and a queen from one of the southern states (where it is warm over the winter and where the bees have a steady food source so that they are not famished when they get to where ever they are going up north).  Each package can be used to populate one empty hive.  Here is a pic of what a package of bees looks like when you pick it up.

The stuff on top of the package is just gravel that I was going to use inside the hive (in their feeders to keep them from drowning) and the spray bottle is the sugar syrup mixture that I use instead of the smoker to keep them calm/preoccupied right before I'm going to do something they might not like. Liiiiike:

Dumping them out of their Bee Transport Vehicle into a strange new home. I'm wearing the ACUs because the pockets are handy as well as the light color and the velcro around the wrists and neck are good at keeping 

curious bees from crawling into places you don't want them.  PLUS they're handy for tucking the insect screen into (the stuff around my head).  And basically I have a functional bee suit at no cost.

So anyways, you take the bee package, squirt them a few times with the sugar syrup, remove the queen cage from the package and secure it into the new hive then dump the bees around them.

And voilà!

The bees are busy setting up shop and preparing themselves for a busy season of pollinating our crops and fruit trees.  

Welcome to the team lil buzzers!!