I ordered all my bee equipment off the internet in late January. It's a standard beginner's kit that all the suppliers offer, and comes complete with all the basic hive parts, tools, and protective gear. The hive sat there, completely assembled, in the middle of the living room for a week or so while I pondered taking the plunge. It's hardly an impulse 10 or 15 years after the inital idea, but it did feel impulsive. One day I just picked up the phone and ordered the "livestock" before I talked myself out of it. I ordered what's considered one of the best ways to get started in bees if you're fortunate enough to live near a supplier - a nucleus, otherwise know as a "nuc" for short in bee parlance. These don't ship, so you have to be driving distance to a supplier or apiary. Luckily we have that here in the ATL, Mr. PN Williams. He supplies a lot of bee folk in town and is well known in bee circles.

A "nuc" a little box filled with hive parts, already populated with live bees in an established colony format, if you will. You get a fat fertile queen, 4 or 5 frames of bees and baby bees in all stages of developement, collectively referred to as "brood". Here's a nuc ready for business, and what's inside one:

At some point in this time period, while I had an assembled beehive in the living room, and live bees on order, I realized my neighbors were entirely likely to see that hive and panic. Despite this being Georgia, our neighbors are not unreasonable or ignorant people. We like them quite a bit, actually. But not everyone is going to be warm to the idea of a colony of 30,000 stinging insects nearby. I know I'm not the only one who watches the Discovery Channel and fears every inevitable calamity. Even my friend Dave, so often clueless, bless his little pea pickin' heart, knew all about "africanization" and killer bees on the march toward Georgia, a menace to life and limb. There's only one thing to do... fence in the yard! The neighbors don't need to know I keep bees until I can tell them so while offering a jar of honey produced from stuff in their very own gardens. Can I get 3 quotes and get this done before the ETA for the bees? No, as it turned out. Luckily the bees were late. The fence was finished the hour before we headed to P.N.'s to pick up the bees on the appointed evening.

Bob is the multi-talented guy who put up my fence, the best fence in the neighborhood by far. He knew he was up against a bee deadline. As he was working on the side toward my neighbor Janice's house, he overheard us gals chatting. Janice, knowing I also want a houseful of dogs to go with the houseful of cats, looks at the fence and says, "Somebody's finally getting a dog!". Bob
just looks at me with a knowing grin... "dogs". Well, I didn't lie to her, exactly. There will be dogs one day soon too! Janice can probably deal with bees just fine. I just didn't want to go there yet. As Bob leaves that night he finished the fence, knowing we were off to get the bees, he said, "good luck with your "dogs".