Gidday! From Australia

Do you listen to your intuition? I wish I did on this day.

I was going to Oxford Honey & Supply to pick up some honey supers and deeps. The night before as I went through my check list I felt that subtle suggestion--Take your camera with you.

I thought, no I don't need to take my camera because I'm only going to a supply warehouse. Even the next morning I heard it again and I thought logically at the time, why, I won't use it? So I left without it.

So, because I didn't listen to my intuition I now have to apologize that the two photos I have are poor, not closeup and were done on a cell phone camera.

You see, while at the supply store there was a man standing there, another beekeeper, and he was holding a cooler.

Just before he left John, the owner, said to me, "Barb, you might want to see this."

"What?" I asked.

"Queens. It's a delivery of queens. We picked them up late last night in Toronto. They're from Australia"

The beekeeper removed the cooler lid and it was full of little queen cages, each with its own queen and attendants. And they were tooting away.

"I can hear their Aussie accents," I said.

Then I went into a side room where they were putting tiny pads of warm water onto the tops of the queen cages - offering the thirsty bees a drink - and some moisture so they could lick at the queen candy in the cage.

The beekeepers who had ordered the queens had all been called and they would soon all be dropping by to pick them up.

What I really regret camera-wise is that I don't have sound or video to play. Otherwise you'd get to hear the high pitched "queen tooting" and a few hundred wings beating, which created a surprising amount of heat.

There were about 200 queens and they were all within inches of each other. I can just imagine if I was a queen that would make me toot too!

Next time, I'll take the camera... no hesitation!