I'm really, really late for writing this post. The Great Bee Adventure started in late April,  but it's now October 1and I am just now writing up the first few days of the GBA. Well, here goes nothing...

The Great Bee Adventure started when Anne and I went to the April meeting of the Austin Area Beekeepers Association (http://www.meetup.com/Austin-Urban-Beekeeping/). We were not planning on getting into bees this year; we just went out of interest and figured it would be a good place to start with some basic introductory material. Both of us were under the assumption that we would go to 6-8 months worth of meetings and then be ready to get some bees.

The joke was on us, however. We met someone sitting in the row right in front of us who was an experienced beekeeper and was just a few weeks away from getting his bees. When his bees arrived, I went out to his property with him and, watched him install his first nuc into a hive box. Then I installed the second nuc, and I realized just how easy it was to do.

I went home that night, talked it over with Anne, and discovered that the local apiary (BeeWeaver) still had nucs available for delivery in June. I ordered a nuc and promptly went online to buy the "woodware," tools and protective gear.

Around a week later, two large boxes showed up on our doorstep:

Hmmmm....what could bee in these boxes?

With great excitement, I opened the boxes to discover a wealth of beekeeping goodies, tightly packed in cardboard.

Lots of goodies were in the boxes!

The boxes contained everything I needed for the first hive: two deep hive boxes, 20 frames for the deep boxes, a medium super (for honey), 20 frames for the medium super, a bottom board, an inner cover, a lid, two bee suits, two sets of gloves, a hive tool (combination pry bar and scraper) and a bee smoker.

The frames needed lots of assembly, while the hive boxes were relatively easy and straightforward.

This is the "foundation" for the frames -- plastic sheets with a shallow honeycomb on them to help the bees get started. Then the plastic is dipped in beeswax so the bees don't know it's plastic.

This is what the frames look like before they are assembled.

I left everything on the dining room table and left it for assembly on another day.

So ends Day 1 of the GBA!