{Thank you, thank you, thank you to my friends Brandie, Cassie, and Rachael for sharing their photos, picking up my camera, and more importantly - sharing the day with us!}
Oh, wow. I didn't know. I really didn't know that I could love these honeybees the way I am coming to love them.
All summer long, each time I've stood on the edge of the beeyard, taken a deep breath and proceeded to dip my hands in to the hives...my confidence around them has grown. The time I spend inspecting the hives has lengthened with each visit. The butterflies of nerves and fear have shifted to butterflies of excitement, curiosity and joy. And the awe I have at the complexity (and sometimes mystery) of what they've got going on in there just grows and grows.
And not a single person has been stung. Not once!
They're gentle, sweet, brilliant, and adorable, I tell you. Adorable.
Being new colonies, and wanting to give them the best footing I could for a good first-year start, I didn't take a summer harvest of honey. But with some borrowed extracting equipment, and the helping hands of friends, we did take just a few frames of honey recently (I left them a full super, plus, to keep them going strong and hopefully thriving through the Maine winter).
I know I'm still gushing about them, and I get a little flustered talking about them, but... it was amazing. The tastiest thing I've ever had a hand in producing/growing/harvesting? I think it might be true. The maple syrup is delicious, the chicken fills me with gratitude, the tomatoes are divine, but the honey? It's otherworldly and totallly humbling, no doubt about it. As we brought the frames inside the kitchen, scraped off the wax cappings and everyone put a finger in for their first taste, I got confirmation that I wasn't alone. It's good stuff, I tell you. And my meager, but wonderful, little 30lb first harvest will be treasured - every single little drop.
I've got a few more things to do before tucking them in for the winter, but the Mama in me is already starting to worry about them. What if the mite treatment I gave them didn't work? What if that isn't enough honey? What about another pest? Predator? What if they just decide to up and leave? And suddenly, they seem so fragile and delicate in front of me, amidst all that could go wrong.
But I look back at the plentiful jars of sweetness in front of me, hear their beautiful hum of a song when I walk by the hive, feel the sticky sweetness they have tucked inside for themselves, see them "cleaning up" the honey from the equipment I've left out for them, and am amazed once again at their strength and innate wisdom. It's a humbling thing to have a very small part in.
Oh, they've worked their way into my heart, these little honeybees.
