Driving with Bees

So yesterday was the big day!  We drove the hives the 2 hours from Hampstead to Raleigh with Anson wearing his bee suit the whole way.  It was an experience neither of us will forget any time soon.  I laughed so hard my abs hurt, just laughing out of the sheer ludicrousness of the whole idea.  Who drives a van full of bees?   We must be crazy.  But we are crazy awesome.

Anson and I ready for the drive to Raleigh

Anson with his full bee suit to Raleigh

At first, we noticed about 10 or so bees flying around but this was only about 10 minutes down the road.  At about 30 bees and15 minutes in we decided to stop and see what was going on.  We stapled down the screen blocking the hive "front porch" and kept going.  After about 5 minutes there were another, say, 30 bees.

Maybe 30 bees on the back window after our first stop

We tried again to staple the screen down, Anson much more serious this time, me laughing so hard I was doubling over and pretty much useless.  We got them to where there were seemingly no bees able to escape and continued on to the highway.  Well, not long later the bees appeared again! My Poppop had said this would be an "impossibility"!  We decided to just keep going and hope for the best.  By the time we got home to Raleigh there were about 150 bees.  Anson says that number is closer to 300-400 but it's tough to count, as you can imagine.  We'll just say an alarmingly uncomfortable amount.

I joined Anson in our bee suits and we unloaded the hives and pulled off the screens.  And now we are officially beekeepers!