My Golden Bee Suit ARRIVED!

I am so thrilled! My Golden Bee suit that was my birthday present arrived today. What a fabulous suit!

It is made for my height and is just perfect. Even in the winter in Atlanta, I can tell that it will be so comfortable to wear. The ventilation is amazing. The hood, although it zips off, is easy to manage and see through. In the pictures below I didn't draw up the strings around my ankle but it is set to keep the bees out of my pants as well.



My new dog Hannah likes the suit too. She thinks she likes the beehives but she is new and hasn't been stung yet although she sniffs around all the hives. Just wait until summer comes! Hannah will learn to respect the bees, I imagine.


This is the best thing that has happened in my beekeeping life in a while. What a great birthday present!



The pockets are oriented so that I can actually put my hands in them (unlike my other suit). Hooray!

If any of you want one, you have to special order it from The Golden Bee Company in Metairie, Louisiana. Their phone number is 504-456-8805. Sue, the daughter of the creators of the suit, is the person to whom you speak. I ordered mine the week before Thanksgiving and expected to wait a long, long time to get it but it came today, less than a month from my order placement.

Note to Self: Wash Beesuit BY ITSELF

My beesuit is now two years and two months old, but the first month didn't count because then I didn't have bees. As it enters its third year of service, my suit has some permanent propolis stains. You can see them in the close-up.

Bees make propolis from sap and it is a sticky, gummy substance. It can be many colors, but mostly my bees make a rust-colored propolis. When it sticks to your suit, it doesn't wash out very well. The suit below has just come out of the dryer, having been washed in Chlorox, but you can still see the propolis stains.

I made the mistake this laundry round of washing my beesuit with my other white laundry. Now I have two white nightgowns as well as a couple of white t-shirts with obvious rust-colored propolis melted into their fabric.

Take it from me: Wash your beesuit by itself!

Sting Saga

Previous to taking the honey from the beehives, I had only been stung once by my bees and that was when I stepped on a bee in my house who was dying on the floor. However, the first weekend that I took honey from the hives, I got stung on my knee when I returned the honey-dripping frames to the hives. I did this without my bee suit, wearing only my veil.

The sting on my knee hurt, but didn't look like anything until the next day when the area was swollen about the size of a silver dollar. It was very itchy for about two days and then went away.

This past weekend, my second weekend to rob the bees, I got stung again. I had been at an all-day choir rehearsal on Saturday and came home at the end of the day to let my dogs out before returning to choir. I love the way it smells when you stand between my two hives. In the warmth of summer, there's a rich smell of honey and bees that is absolutely wonderful. I often go out in the morning before work without my beesuit on to enjoy the smell.

So at 5 PM without my beesuit I went out to stand between the hives before returning to choir. There were three things wrong with this decision: I was wearing all black, I had had a Coke about an hour before, and it was the time of day when my bees are in orientation flights. The Internet forum posters all suggest that you get stung more when wearing black and when you have ingested caffeine.

I got stung right under my eyebrow. It hurt but I went on back to the party. The next day my eye was swollen shut and over the day, although I could open my eye, swelling developed that was an oval about four inches from above my eyebrow to below my cheekbone. This is called a large local reaction by those familiar with stings. One Internet site I read said that stings around the eye often result in "comic distortions of the face" which explains why this post has no pictures!

Now it's Tuesday and everything is finally back to normal after two days of no contact lenses and "comic distortion of the face."

But I'm wearing my bee veil for the rest of the bee season!

I've finally been stung

I've kept bees since Easter, 2006 - that's over two months now and I haven't been stung. Every morning I go out to the hives and stand between them and take pictures or just observe the bees. When I do this, I'm in my regular street clothes - no beesuit, no protection. Sometimes the bees send out a guard bee to send me back into the house, but most of the time they ignore me.

Every time I work on the hives in full suit, I end up with bees in the house. I imagined that they must come in on my beesuit, so I started taking the suit off outside on the deck and leaving it there for several hours before bringing it in.

My little dogs are in the yard all the time and have very long coats. Maybe the bees come in on their fur.

Inevitably I have bees in the house. Here's a picture of one on the paper towel roll. Often the bees are drawn to lights, just like moths. When I know one is in the house, it is often at the end of the day when only a light or two is on in the house. Then I'll hear the bee and know that she is near one of the lights that is on. They buzz and fly into the light as moths do.

Sometimes I can cover the bee with a glass and slide a postcard under the glass, trapping the bee. When that happens I can release the bee outdoors.

Tonight I came in from dinner with friends to find a bee buzzing around the kitchen lights and a box from Amazon on my doorstep. I ignored the bee and opened the box. In it was in fact a book I had ordered on beekeeping. I set the book on the counter and went to work on my computer for a while.

I returned to the kitchen and stood at the counter, reading the book. I took a step while I was reading and felt a sting in the bottom of my big toe.The light bulb bee had landed on the ground, dying, and I had stepped on her. She spent the last moments of her life giving me my first bee sting since becoming a beekeeper!

Inspection cameos

Here I am in my bee veil - Linda the Beekeeper!
Becky, my daughter, is the photographer for the last four posts. She took this picture of her as she watched me put Destin back together in the inspection. (She came inside because the bees seemed a trifle too interested in her for her comfort!)
This is Henry, one of my two black Pomeranians. Henry is relegated to watching the inspection from the inside of the sunporch because his sister, Haley, was stung pretty badly and I didn't want that to happen to either dog again. Henry sits and watches me through the door while I work on the bees.

The newest bee

I haven't added to this blog in several days because I have been busy learning to be a grandmother to my first grandchild: Dylan. Isn't he adorable? This is a picture of me holding him when he was just 11 hours old.

I can't wait until he is old enough for me to buy him a child-sized beesuit so he can bee a beekeeper too!

Beautiful capped honey

When I inspected the bees today, I found beautiful capped honey. The first super was full with about 45 % of the honey capped. When the frames in the super are completely capped, I can remove the super and finally taste the honey that my bees are making.

The second picture is of the uncapped honey. It is really dark. We just ended the tulip poplar
flow and that honey is a darker honey. I'd like to think the bees are happy with their work, but mostly they were irritated with me for disrupting their day and intruding into their house!

So far when I work on the bees, I always wear my suit, complete with veil and gloves. I haven't been stung yet but I'm sure the day is coming. My little dog Haley has been stung twice now by bees that come into my house unbeknownst to me after I've worked on the bees. She got curious and pushed a bee around with her paw and the bee gave up her life to show Haley how mad she was about that treatment.

Bee Status Report

I donned my beesuit and lit the smoker! I used dryer lint to get it started and pine needles to keep it going - Hooray!

I checked on both hives and they look great. Bermuda has gotten a new shot of adrenalin and is growing rapidly - still a couple of frames behind Destin. Both are working well in the medium that I added last week.

These two layers - the hive body and the medium super are for the bees. This weekend or even maybe on Friday I'll add a honey super that may actually be for me.

I went to the Metro Beekeepers
meeting tonight. In Atlanta we have one of the oldest ongoing beekeepers' associations in the country. It's a great place to get help with beginner questions. Cindy Bee (that's really her name) who is famous in Atlanta for rescuing swarms of bees was there. She knows so much about it. I loved hearing her talk about her bees.

I'm learning more every day and from every contact with other beekeepers.

Funny picture of me in HUGE beekeeper suit

This picture was taken at night with the camera on night setting so it is dim and not well-focused but at least you can get a good laugh at me in the BeeSuit!

I've posted on a beekeeping forum and gotten advice that the best thing a woman can do is to get bee britches (they come in petite sizes for the short person) and a jacket with a veil - so that's what I'll do and save this huge thing for visiting sons-in-law and others who might want to get suited up and look inside the hives with me.