WHAT'S ALL THE "BUZZ" ABOUT?

We are now the proud owner of honey bees!  We built our beehives this week and finally got our bees (and their queens) this morning.  It has been exciting so far.

Out hives!  :-)

I was really proud of my cute husband and youngest daughter as they did most of the hard work.  Scott was stung four or five times on his hands but didn't let on like it hurt at all.  He has complained a LITTLE of pain when someone shakes his hand, but otherwise he's amazing!  I think he is especially sexy when he works hard and learns knew skills and things so this whole bee keeping thing is awesome!

Kotten Kandy and Scott - It's hard to see in these two pics, but they are covered in bees....

My oldest daughter stayed as far away as possible but did hand the sugar water over before the bees were let out.  I'm pretty proud of myself too.  I was only a yard away during the whole ordeal in civilian clothing.  I was calm and collected... even when one of the bees decided to walk under my cheek for a moment.  :-)

This is as close as Key Lime Pie came to the bees. (They are still in their boxes.)

I picked up a box....  Can you believe it?

Here is what we have learned so far:
There are about 20,000 different species of bees in the world.  Bees live in colonies and there are three types of bees in each colony.  There is the queen bee, the worker bee and the drone.  The worker bee and the queen bee are both female, but only the queen bee can reproduce.  All drones are male.  Worker bees clean the hive, collecting pollen and nectar to feed the colony and they take care of the offspring.  The drone's only job is to mate with the queen.  The queen's only job is to lay eggs.

Building the boxes was half the fun....

Honeybees live in large "families" and are found all over the world.  The honeybee is the only social insect whose colony can survive many years.  That is because they huddle together and eat honey to keep themselves alive during the winter months.  They pollinate more than 100 crops in the US, and often fly up to three miles away from their hive.  They flap their wings 11,000 times per minute, which is why it sounds like they are "buzzing".  Honeybees can only sting once, because their stingers are barbed and tear off when they try to get away.

Kotten Kandy is using this for a Personal Progress project.

I guess we can call this a science fair project!  We are learning tons!