Bees Make the Best Pets. Jack Mingo

bees, or even school kids, I had to get back to class, so I put a few of my students to work.

      Happy to miss a few minutes of their class for a worthy (or frankly, for any) cause, they mixed up some sugar water, one part hot water to one part sugar. We poured it into a feeder (basically an upside-down mason jar with nail holes pounded into its lid), and took it up to them. Even before we attached it to their hive, the bees smelled the sugar and began streaming excitedly to the jar. Most recovered from their lethargic stupor. Within a day, they had emptied the pint jar and were asking, “Please sir, may we have more?” We continued providing the sweet stuff until the weather cleared up for a long stretch and they began turning up their noses at it.

      Still No Observation Hive

      I'd like to be able to report that my new beehive quickly became a healthy, fully functioning hive that allowed me to finally do what I'd originally intended to do—set up an observation hive—but it turns out that it doesn't work that way. The bees had a lot of work to do before they'd even have a viable hive, much less be able to donate precious comb and bees to a new hive. It would be days, maybe weeks, before they'd build some of the comb deep enough for the queen to begin laying eggs. Those newly laid eggs would take another twenty-one days before they'd emerge as adult bees. During honey season, a bee may live only forty-two days, which means that a large percentage of the mail-order bees would be dead before the first batch of new bees would replace them.