First meeting tonight.

It's been very rainy here lately which hopefully will lead to tons of flowers blooming for the bees by the time they get here.

Tonight is a meeting of the Maumee Valley Beekeepers Assoc which I will attend and join. I am hoping huband will come along. Severe social anxiety makes things like this rather difficult for me. I'm feeling it in the pit of my stomach already.

On the next non-rainy day I will paint the outside of the topfeeder and put "my" hive where I want it. Since we can't agree on things, hubs will put his in a different location in the yard - which may be helpful for the bees if nothing else they are less likely to get confused between hives - whether or not that makes a difference is yet to be seen.

Meeting people is hard, but hopefully will be helpful in our venture. I also found that a couple at our church has this great website:
http://www.ueitoledo.com/

I don't know the couple yet, but perhaps will meet them tonight. We'll see!

Delivery today!

Today we are expecting to receive our beekeeping equipment. Unfortunately, it's a super rainy cold day so far. I hope it clears up later so we can play with stuff and begin setting it up!

It will still be several weeks before we get our bees and there is a good chance that it's too late in the season to be hope for any honey for us this year. Still, if we get them to settle in and make enough honey for themselves to survive the winter - we will consider it a great success for our first year!

I'm pretty excited!

Waiting

Not much new happening on the bee front.

The charge from Dadant came through on our credit card, but no UPS tracking is available yet so I assume it hasn't been shipped. We have time, so that's ok.

I found out the time and location of the local beekeeper's association meetings and they are quite local. There's one coming up in a few weeks and we hope to attend.

Waiting is not my strong suit. It's still pretty cold some days here, though, so I know it will work out for the best. Life goes on as it is spring break at Kiddo's school this week and we will find ways to keep busy.

MinnPost - Colony collapse disorder: The bees' disease

MinnPost - Colony collapse disorder: The bees' disease

bees ordered

May 11 is the big day!

Order placed

I did it. I ordered the equipment to start up 2 hives of bees!  Tomorrow I will order the bees themselves, two four-pound packages of Russians are what has been recommended since we will have a late start in the Spring. Hopefully I can obtain them from a supplier about an hour from here so we don't have to freak out the postal workers - they are under enough pressure as it is!

So in mid to late May I may get to drive an hour in the Prius with 2 queens and 8 lbs of  workers and drones. Anybody wanna ride along??

Order practically ready!

I never found the feeder I was looking for, and decided to wait on a few purchases until we see how much harvesting we will be doing this first year. I expect it to be very little or even, possibly, none the first year. I believe in keeping my expectations low so as to prevent disappointment.  

We'll get one 3XL bee coverall including veil - Sweetie and I will share (no, not at the same time) and a junior-sized one for Kiddo.

We'll have 2 complete painted and assembled hive sets, queen excluders, 2-frame extractor, smoker, some commercial bee food, a sting kit, one top feeder and one front feeder, scratcher, hive tool, frame lifter and seems like a myriad other things. I am hoping the order will go in this afternoon.

It is one minute after noon already. I suppose it's time for me to stop researching and actually get myself ready for the day!