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My official sting count for the day was six. The stings swelled up like little red balloons and were seriously itchy—worse than any case of poison ivy I’ve ever had. But they were only painful for the first twenty-four hours and were gone in a few days, and they didn’t deter me from working with honeybees. Since my first eventful hiving, I have hived dozens of packages of bees and never have I experienced a hive as hotheaded as those Italians. For some reason, they were agitated, and I got the brunt of it. I’ve chalked it up to beginner’s luck.

After hiving my honeybees (or something of the sort), we let nature take its course. In one week I would return to see if the sugar cork was eaten and the queen was released from her cage. I was looking forward to my first inspection of my very own honeybees.

CHAPTER 6

First Observations as a New Beekeeper

The next day I was delighted to walk over to my bee yard and find that the last few of my bees had made it out of the bee box and into the hive. The weather was perfect—close to seventy degrees—and the morning sunlight cast a dappled pattern upon my red beehive. A few bees gathered at the entrance while dozens of others hovered around it. Many others flew in and out of the hive. A low, soft hum floated on the air. The incredibly rapid beat of the bees’ wings and the vibration of their thoraxes create this familiar sound we call buzzing. For musicians, it is a steady, single note in the key of C-sharp. Signs of life, I thought. A sense of peace and comfort that I cannot quite explain in words came over me. Though there were hundreds of honeybees buzzing around my head and an abundance of activity at the hive entrance, there also was a distinct sense of order and serenity about it all. Anyone who has kept honeybees knows this sense of harmony. I stood in front of the hive, quietly observing my bees. After a few minutes, I needed a chair. The activity was all so hypnotic, I could not pull myself away.

The short flights my bees were taking around the hive are called orientation flights. It appeared that the workers were simply hovering around the hive, but as the name implies, these flights allow the bees to get acquainted with the location of their new home. Worker bees help their sisters return home by distributing another pheromone from their nasonov gland located on the tip of their abdomen. Standing on their back legs and lifting their abdomens, the workers flap their wings to release the scent. I noticed the bees at the entrance of the hive engaging in this interesting behavior.

The bees I saw in flight were definitely the worker bees, more slender and more graceful than the drones, who seemed to just be walking aimlessly around the hive entrance. Occasionally I’d observe a worker walking right on top of a drone or pushing him off the landing strip as if to say, “Out of my way! I have things to do!”

Each day for the first week after I’d hived my bees, I visited them and observed every one of their movements. I kept my notebook nearby to write down what I saw and draw a few sketches of my bees. They didn’t seem to mind my presence at all. I noticed that on rainy days the bees stayed inside, but when the sun shined, they were animated and industrious. Before the week was out, I observed that the worker bees had begun carrying in brightly colored granules of pollen balls on both of their hind legs. Foraging for nectar and pollen meant the hive was full of activity and young bees were being raised. Some of the granules were positively huge relative to the size of the bee, and others were tiny. Yet, despite the granules’ size, each bee seemed to carry them effortlessly into the hive. The workers entered the hive without objection from the guard bees who stood on the lookout at the entrance.

My workers seemed to have such a purposeful life, contentedly visiting the crocuses and daffodils, interrupted only by the occasional cleansing flight. Yes, honeybees leave the hive to find a restroom. They will