This post is not about the rain

That doesn't mean it isn't still raining (it is - very much so) but I think I have found something more interesting to write about: the beehive in our living room.

I've taken to calling it a bee house rather than a hive because it doesn't look like the hives I used to be dangerously fascinated with as a child. It's just a bunch of wooden boxes stacked up, with a green slab that looks like a hat sitting atop.

Eric built it on Martin Luther King Day, which he had off but I didn't. First he had to drive to Sacramento to pick up all the wooden pieces (many, many pieces). Then he spent what I can only imagine was the vast majority of the day hammering nails into them (order of magnitude more nails than pieces of wood).

I don't know if our neighbors had the day off or not.

He bought enough wood to make two complete bee houses - each of them with a base, 5 bee boxes and a funny green hat. One is built. The other one is still practically at the sheep/loom stage hidden in the guest bedroom.

The bees (~30,000 of them) will arrive end of April in a box shipped overnight from somewhere not too far away. Apparently it weighs 3-4 pounds. I'm sort of curious as to what sorts of labeling they put on the outside of the box.

It is my understanding that the bee house will not stay in the living room once the bees become resident in it. (It's too cold and there isn't enough nectar flow in here.)

The Bees Knees

For anyone who was curious, this is what it would look like if Eric were a beekeeper and also a game show host.

Busy as a bee

Beekeeping is cool. It is also one of those hobbies that I had no idea so many people did until I started talking about it in my facebook updates and now suddenly everyone and their dad is a beekeeper.

The class took place at a small farm in Ben Lomond which offers a lot of classes targeted at hobby farmers. It is not a large piece of land at all but it includes a massive garden, a whole lot of chickens, one very fat black pig and two old dogs.*

We got there a little early and wandered around checking out the plants and the animals and the other people. Nowhere in the class description did it say that it was Beekeeping for Lesbians but, well, the laws of probability suggest it must have been in there somewhere.

The very best part of the beekeeping class was the demo with actual real live bees. Thousands and thousands of them! Our fearless teacher put on her funny suit and took the boxes apart to show us how it works. The first thing to note is that everything is very, very sticky.

And also, everything is covered in bees. They literally drip off the frames when she picks them up.
This is where the bees go in and out. One thing I learned that I did not know before is that there are Guard Bees that are like little tiny bouncers; they hang out by the door and make sure that only bees that are hip enough and wearing the right shoes get in. Bees that don't belong will, apparently, literally get wrestled to the ground in an effort to deny them entrance.



*"Or what? You'll Release the Dogs? or the Bees? or the Dogs with Bees in Their Mouths so When They Bark They Shoot Bees at You?"**
**No idea why the website where I copied this has it in title caps. Or why I would rather write about the title caps than just fix them.