Happy bees

James checking on the bees after putting on a honey super.

One of the questions I have been asked several times is why we don't wear protective gear while working with our bees. The answer is that, well, sometimes we do. Depending on what time of day it is we can tell just how many bees we have in our hive and what kind of mood they are in. On rainy, nasty days a lot of bees stay in the hive. Same goes for late afternoon and evening times. The bees all come back to the hive at night for snoozin'. 

On beautiful days, like the one in my pictures, a lot of bees are out and about, doing their bee-thang, and gathering pollen. The bees that are left in the hive are usually workers, nurses and others that have jobs much more important than seeing what we are up to.

Lifting our lid to see what they're up to.

Another reason we are able to not wear protective gear sometimes is that we specifically chose a breed of bee that is known for being friendly. Italian bees! Eh, whatchu think about that!? When we went to the bee factory to pick up our bumbles we ordered Italian queens, specifically. Imagine that. an Italian queen. When we brought them back to the new homes, the queen goes out and gets busy. Seriously, she gets a one night stand, but she takes full advantage of it... if ya know what I mean. So when she comes back and lays all her little baby bee eggs they are all Italians too! 

Some beekeepers claim that their bees are "used to" them, and thus don't get all worked up when they go out poking around in their bee condos. I don't know if our bees are necessarily used to us or if they just recognize that people are around all the time and that we don't really mess with them too much. In fact, sometimes we do awesome things for them, like bring food and flowers. James' dad has to mow the grass around the hives often and his mom even planted the beautiful sunflowers around them that you can see in these pictures.

If you look closely, you can see all the bees covering the lid where James is looking.
 I'd say they don't mind us too much.

Our bees will come out and check us out when we are working. They'll fly around and sometimes land around us, but for the most part they just mind their own business. I'll admit I was skeptical of having so many bees around all the time, but after working with them so far I think it has given me an entirely new outlook on the bee. They have way too much going on to mess with us.