The Bees

     Hi everyone. Happy Thursday to you. 

    I haven't shared any pages from my grunge inspired envelope book for awhile, and this one, with all the bee sequins, is perfect for Neet's It Must Have Wings challenge at Art Journal Journey. Sorry but neither of today's photos are fantastic. The first one is so you can see the whole page in the book, and then I zoomed in for a little bit better view. This book doesn't lay flat very well because it's quite thick, so if the photos look crooked it's because the pages pop up a bit.

     I started this page by die cutting this pretty lace image. After I glued it down, I splattered the page with some blue and brown watercolor paints

     You can see it better in this view. I also added a punch out compass image from 49 and Market. I had this golden-brown colored flower sequins so I added them, and I put a small bronze 1/2 pearl into the center. These flowers were an afterthought since I actually went into the sequin box to find the little bee sequins which you can also see on my page. In fact, they're the park with the wings on my page. (grin)

    I finished by stamping the quote and adding a couple of flat buttons that I ran some waxed thread through first. 

     And I have bees. 👍❤😀  My first batch arrived earlier this week. 

    This time I ordered my bees back where I originally received bees. I used a bee business called Mountain Sweet Honey in Georgia as I've always had high quality bee shipments with them. The man who runs this business only wants successful bee colonies to ship, and when the colonies needed more time for a successful queens, he postponed  shipments for 3 weeks. It worked out for me better also  because now it's warmer and better bee weather here in New Hampshire.

     This is what the box is like when I open up the screening. To release the bees (next photo), I remove this can which contains sugar water that feeds the bees while they are in transit. This time I tried a new variety of honeybees called Caucasian bees. Like their name says, they are originally from the Caucasus mountains which are in southwestern Russia as well as Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Armenian and parts of Iran. One trait of these honeybees is that they like to make a lot of propolis/wax  compared to other varieties. You can see they made some on the can, and it did make it a bit tougher to remove from the box.

     I decided to try this variety because they reach their full colony growth mid-summer. Many bee colonies reach that size earlier in the season, but since spring is later arriving where I live, I thought these bees might do well. I also discovered in my research they have the longest proboscis (a straw like structure coming out of the mouth) of all honey bee varieties.  Time will tell if I like this variety or not.

     When they first go in, there are bees everywhere. I guess if you're disturbed from your closed in space and somewhere new. you are not only a bit out of kilter but also in need of exploring your new turf.

     They find the front of their hive box quickly enough, and after a couple of hours, the swarm of bees calms down and most of them are in the hive.

     And for those who may be wondering, I did not get stung in the process. 😏

     Have a great day ahead.