Fresh Honey and a Lucky Winner

I was the lucky earth day winner over at Cloud Nine Designs and got this great custom silkscreened hoodie. I should have taken a picture of the packaging but I was too excited and lacked patience. It was so thoughtfully wrapped. You know, paying attention to details like that don't go unnoticed with me. I was expecting it to be plainly tossed in a mailer, but instead she wrapped it like a pretty present with tissue, ribbon, cute little cards and a pin. To enter the contest on her blog, you had to plant a tree for earth day and send her a picture (sorry my picture was late, had to make sure they survived the transplant first). I planted four trees, and sadly, one didn't make it. Here's me trying to get a close-up of the print on my shirt. Took several shots, all of them ended up right boob shots. My arms are just not long enough to take the picture so I hung it on a hanger instead. Pretty cool, huh? Thanks Amber, I love it!

On another note, our beekeeper guy who we refer to as "the bee charmer", came by today to add another box for our little orphaned bees to expand into and start making some honey. For those of you who don't know the story behind our recently acquired bees, here's how it happened.
We had a swarm make their home under my neighbors water meter last fall. My husband and I called a beekeeper who came and put the swarm in a hive and in our backyard. The amazing part was watching him do it. He did it all without the special suit and bare handed. I just stood there in awe as he did his bee chanting hum thing which he said he was totally unaware of till I asked him about it. He had his big sunglasses resting on his ball cap and if you stared at him too long, he kind of looked like a bee himself. The bees were so mellow and friendly, so I just stood right next to him while he worked. My family had bee hives growing up, but I've never seen anything like this. Since it was close to winter and the hive had zero food to sustain themselves, I had to feed them once a week till late spring. Picture a large sippy cup of watered down honey upside down so they could suck the honey out from the bottom.
So anyway, today was are first lesson has hobbyist beekeepers. We even got to harvest a little bit because the hive was so full. I have a big mixing bowl full in the kitchen and saved some spears of honey comb to add to my jars when I fill them. All that from just one shelf in the hive. I was told that in the summer, they will make up to 100lbs of honey every two weeks. I need more jars!