A Bee-utiful Tour

My sister Lou and I went up to sister Brenda's for a couple days. We had a really fun time. We arrived on Sunday evening and went to see the movie "Julie & Julia". We totally enjoyed it. (Maybe because 2 of us are bloggers and Lou is a good cook). Monday morning we went out to breakfast with some good friends of Lou's from nursing school. THEN, in the afternoon we took a great tour of Bob's Bee Yards. At the first yard we went to, Bob was there collecting honey. He is so informative about the process. Here he was showing us the "escape" they use to get the bees out of the honey 'supers', so that they can take just the honey and not the bees home with them.

I wasn't really nervous, as Bob said the bees were really docile right now; but then he proceeded to show us a stinger from a bee that had tried to sting his glove. He didn't think it was one of his bees though, as there were also other bees in the area.

Lou and I were able to stick our finger in a honey comb and taste the honey--it was yummy! (I tried to stick it into the netting on my face and then realized I had to put my finger in a little opening at my neck to get the honey to my mouth--duh!)

The above picture is bee yard # 2. They are all in different settings and very interesting to see.

This was bee yard #3--I think there were a total of 9 bee hives here.

At bee yard #4 we also saw some beautiful flower gardens. So we had a combo of bees and beauty, as you can see in the pictures below.

That evening we went to an outdoor concert at Ravinia (but that's a story for another time).

We also heard a fantastic story from Brenda about a "bee blunder" with some honey jars. You can read about it on Brenda's blog. Although it wasn't funny at the time, we got lots of laughs out of it!

It was just fun to get together as sisters and visit and have fun together. I'm so thankful for my family and for the good relationships we have, knowing that is not the case with many families.