Happy Bee Girl / Sad Bee Girl

It has kind of been a long time since I've written because all my bees died. But guess what! I got new ones on May 21st! When the bees were coming home to my house, the bees were in the backseat with me, on the floor on the other side of the car. There were 10,000 bees in just a small box, like a foot long. Surprisingly, I was not nervous to have the bees in the backseat of the car with me. I felt very happy because the bees got introduced to us while we were in the car because they were with their new family.

I have to mention that the queen was unknown. The bees did not know her. She was in her own small box. My mom sprayed all the bees with water to cool them down. When it was time to put the bees in the hive, I GOT TO PULL THE BOX WITH THE QUEEN IN IT. There were also a couple worker bees in there. We had to take off the metal cap because that's how she gets out of the box when she's ready and she's gotten to know the other bees. We hung the queen's box up between two bars with wire.

Do you know how we got the rest of the bees in the hive? My mom banged the box so all of them fell down then flipped the box right into the hive. Since the queen was already in the hive, the other bees wanted to be with her too. And since all of them did not come out, we just put it vertical (that was a good word) with the hole looking toward the hive. And when they were ready, they could come in.

That was the first happy bee girl day. Well, I had another on Father's Day. My hand was on the edge of the bee hive but not close to the door. A bee just walked on my hand. I came up from the bee hive and showed my mom and dad. My dad was kind of scared because he thought I was going to get stung. Well, I did not and I did not get worried. And I didn't really listen because I thought that was kind of weird. I thought, "Daaaaaaad, stop it. I won't get stung. The bee loves me." It did not want to come off me when I wanted it to go off to its hive. It came back on me. I tried it again and it came off and did not come back on. I was kind of glad because I did not want to keep on trying to put a bee back on its hive.

The next day, I was over by the hive again. A bee chased me and stung me right on my knuckle. The stinger was still in it and I got to see the stomach. The stomach was tiny and white. It felt so bad, I screamed. I was not really fussing with the bees but my hand was pretty close to the door and I did not really mean it. I ran inside and got the secret cure. I'll tell you the secret cure but don't tell anybody else: it is baking soda and your saliva. Just make a paste with it and put it on your bee sting. My mom also gave me a homeopathic remedy (mom's note: Apis). It calmed me down. This is weird--it was so long ago, my finger is fine but I can still see the mark that the stinger left.

How do bees not sting you?

I know the answer. When we open our hive, we don't need a hat, a veil or any suit. We look and don't steal a lot of honey. We use a smoker but don't smoke it that much. But most important, we are nice to the bees when we open the hive.

Always be sure to rub lemon balm on your skin--they love that smell. When you make the hives, you rub lemon balm on the inside before you put bees in them.

If they fly over to you and land on you when you are playing, just sit still and wait until they fly off. Once in kindergarten, my friend, Rowan had a bee on her and she went crazy. Ms. A got it off and stepped on the bee. I was horrified!