#12. The wait is almost over

There is a magical feeling about all this.  Perhaps it's as close as I will ever get to re-living those highly-charged days just before all the Christmases of my childhood.  The delicious anguish of waiting for Santa Claus is something akin to what I'm going through no, counting down the days and hours until honey bees inhabit my garden.

And I know I'm not alone.  I just got off the phone with Mike, one of my classmates, and it was so cool to hear the undisguised, boyish excitement he expressed at the prospect of installing his bees in his hive - finally - this week.  I had thought of beekeeping as a largely solitary pursuit, but it now appears that there will be a community of like-minded folk who will be eager to share experiences and help one another along.  Case in point - Len.  I met Len last weekend at a bee demonstration and class up island near St. James.  What a gorgeous site in a large nature preserve, with a beautiful, rustic building where the class was held.  Anyway, we were there to watch Ray install 'package bees' into hives in the bee yard.  These are new colonies this year, and so we helped set up the hives before Ray did the installation.  We were all 'suited up' and there were bees all over us.  (P.S.  No one got stung.)  At the end of the class, Len invited anyone who was interested to follow him back to his nearby home and watch him divide his colony.  He started with one hive last year, but had just picked up a second queen from Ray and was splitting the colony into two hives.  (The dark Yugoslavian queen came from one of the best bee breeders in the country, apparently.  The queens that came with the packages Ray installed were blonde Italians.)  Several of us went along and it was a pretty exciting experience.  Len has been lucky enough to have been mentored by a prominent beekeeper, and wants to pass along his experiences to the rest of us.

Mike, the classmate I mentioned earlier, is picking up my nukes for me tomorrow night from Ray's house in Bohemia.  (This is the third time the pick-up date has been scheduled; twice the bees were delayed and now they're earlier than expected!)  Mike will relay the nukes to me Wed. night after class in Riverhead.  I don't know Mike, except by name and over the phone, but he knows I'm all the way out here on The End, and offered to do this just to help out a fellow novice beekeeper.  I have to say that everyone I've met so far through this bee network has been super nice.  Hey, maybe all beekeepers are great people.

I've been busy as a you-know-what the last week getting my hives set up.  The weather has been a challenge - lots of rain - so my painting kept getting delayed.  But the rain made the ground nice to work, so I did a lot of digging and weeding in the bee yard.  Then I put down landscape fabric and covered it with wood chips.  I constructed a low (12" high) table out of pressure-treated scrap wood that I had laying around.  This hive stand is big enough to accommodate two hives with some extra space for resting frames and equipment when I go in to open up the hives.  The most exciting thing, though, is the color I've painted the hives and the table.  I'm calling it 'midnight blueberry'.  Oil-based solid stain, because I think that'll hold up better.  I'm in love with the color.  It's yummy.

I think the bees will have plenty to do by this weekend.  There are a lot of native highbush blueberries on my property and the flower buds are about to burst.  The lovely scarlet catkins on the big swamp maple will be unfurling in a week or less.  The forsythias throughout the neighborhood have exploded, and there are plenty of dandelions around.  The daffodils and violets are not yet at their peak.  The buds are abundant and fat on my espaliered pear.  But I understand that honey bees are not very fond of pear blossoms.  Pity.