Our girls moved in yesterday evening.

Orientation flights are happening this morning.

We had a great time with our first hands-on experience in a bee yard today. It felt very natural and we were very calm.

Getting the smoker going to use to calm the bees.

Getting to examine up close for the things we learned about in bee school.

They did sugar shake tests to check for mites. They gather some bees in a jar, pour in powdered sugar, let them settle for a few minutes and then turn the jar upside down and shake the mites out through the screen onto a white surface and count. The sugar makes the mites fall off. Depending on the number of mites, you may have to do a mite treatment of your choice.

Here are the sugared bees returning to the hive. One of the powdered ones stung me on my finger while I was taking this photo. I scraped the stinger off. It only hurt for about five minutes or so, swelled for a little while and then returned to normal. No big deal. Glad it happened.

As usual, the kids were pretty much fearless.

The girls with their “butts” in the air are on cleaning duty, getting the cells ready for the queen to lay new eggs.

And then there is the queen of queens, totally immersed.

Last Tuesday was the final class of bee school.  Those of us that chose to took the written part of the NCSBA beekeepers certification exam.  The practical part will happen in the summer when we have actually had bees for a while.

Today we have field day in a bee yard and get to mess with some hives.

I’m a little concerned that this is a cloudy days and it was sprinkly yesterday.  Bees don’t care for rainy days and they tend to get testy.  This may be a brief field day.