Bees at last!

Yes! 

Finally - my bees have arrived. What a saga. 

Between my not putting a stamp on the envelope with my order, to all of the bees dying of heat when the first batch was brought up, I thought I'd never have bees again.

But this Saturday, all went smoothly. 

I picked up my two packages in Blue Bell (a 45 minute drive with no traffic from Philadelphia). On the way home I kept feeling that something was crawling around in my blouse. Thinking I was just imagining creepy-crawlies I kept driving. But then I put my elbow on the window sill of the car and a bee flew out! Thank goodness I didn't get stung.

Installing them into the hives went well and last night I let the queens out - again, no problems. Nobody stung me. yay! I still have to put honey supers on, but I'm going to wait a bit. Give the queen some time to adjust and let everyone know they are okay. 

I had another nice garden surprise; apparently, I have a wisteria vine in the garden.  

I had suspected as much for a few years as I spied a few remnants of blooms that hadn't quite met their maturity. But this year there was no mistake when I came home one day to find the above. 

Unfortunately they are intertwined with Mr. El's bundle of chain link fence he has been threatening to install for the last four years. sigh.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to figure out how to get the vine out of the chain link coil to save it. I'd really like more of these!