Best Day EVER!!

Well Tyler and I took quite the field trip recently! We realized that we were ready for our second beehive so the president of our beekeepers association put us in contact with a man who sells nucs (small colonies of bees) up in Central, AL. So Tyler and I borrowed his Dad's pickup truck and drove north to pick up our girls. Side note: we decided that since our hives are mostly all girls that they needed sorority names so this new hive is named Beta Zeta, BZ, get it? bzzzzz! Anyway, when we got there we were amazed, this man had almost 60 hives that were all painted bright pastel colors like an basket full of Easter eggs! He also had a beautiful organic garden which almost completely feeds he and his wife, numerous fruit trees and bushes,  a slew of guinea hens and a wood shop that Tyler would die for. Needless to say, Tyler and I found our utopia!

More than anything else, this trip was a great learning experience for us. The man opened up many of his hives and explained exactly what was going on and what we were looking at. This kind of education my friends, is priceless for a novice beekeeper like myself!

We even got to assist him in catching a swarm. Not so scary looking huh? We had to get the queen in the box so that all her worker bees would follow. IT.WAS.AMAZING.

The bees were so preoccupied with what they were doing that they didn't even sting his bare hand when he stuck his finger in the clump to find the queen!

You can see her in the picture below with the little white dot on her back. He marks his queen with a paint pin so that he can spot her whenever he inspects his hives. Think Where's Waldo!

The picture below in no way does his garden justice! It's huge and beautiful and he practices only organic methods to support his whole food vegetarian lifestyle. It really is an inspiration to see!

Check out that Dinosaur Kale on the left! Yum!!!!

 Tyler and I came home on cloud 9 and can't wait to go back and visit him again! There really is something so amazing about seeing how things grow and produce!

And yes, I know I am a huge dork!