Le Charme Des Abeilles

Unbelievably, we caught the swarm today.

It happened like this: I woke up this morning and BAH said,

"You'll never catch them now, if they're in that tall grass."

So, later, when Little Z and I put on our protective clothing, it was all very half-hearted. I said,

"We're just checking on them. We probably won't be able to catch them, unless they just climbed inside that box."

Well, guess what? They just climbed inside that box. It must have been the French perfume. (Le Charme Des Abeilles. It's sort of like Axe for bees, you know?) Those Frenchies really do the bee keeping right.

The box was mangled badly from last night's failed attempt, so I used about a half pound of masking tape on it, while Little Z sprayed the bees with sugar water so they wouldn't fly away. Amazingly, the spray bottle worked perfectly fine today. Also, once again, I just haver to point this out: my bee keeping assistant is five years old, and she does a damn fine job!

Once the box was taped securely, I picked it up, and it was heavy, which is a good sign. Then we just drove it on over to the empty bee hive- which wasn't quite empty, actually. Stinging ants had taken up residence in it. Of course! But I got the stinging ants out yesterday, and then I put a little bit of bee perfume in there, too!

So we were all set. Except... really, I though dumping them into yet another box was going to make those bees angry, and I didn't want my little girl getting stung. Just when I was trying to figure out how to approach this, Little Z said,

"Can I just walk home now?"

"Sure."

So, I waited for her to walk away, I dumped the bees in the empty hive, the bees got angry and tried to sting me, but I was prepared and didn't get stung. I put the lid on and left.

I checked on them later. They're still in there, setting up home!