Four days had passed since we left our brand new, very first ever bee hive in Burns Harbor, Indiana. We didn’t exactly abandon it. In fact, we’d left it in the most capable of hands – our bee mentor, Bob Kress of Kress Apiary. Bob promised he’d call when he had our bees safely installed in their new home. But what if our little hive was lost and forgotten? Bob had a lot of hives and managed a lot of bees.

Just as my patience was about to run dry, I returned home from my Thursday run to find the message light on the phone flashing.

“I’ve got you’re bees,” Bob said. “You can come get ‘em tonight if you like. Or tomorrow night. Or Saturday if it suits you.”

I smiled, at once soothed by the slow, gentle cadence of Bob’s calming voice.

Ironically, after my bout with impatience, we couldn’t pick the bees up until Saturday, but I rested easy knowing Bob hadn’t forgotten us and our tiny, single hive. Bob assured us the bees would be just fine until Saturday.

“Can you make it here before seven?” Bob asked when I called to finalize the pick up. “They don’t really start flying until nine. This way they’ll wake up in Chicago.”

The idea of our bees, OUR BEES, waking up in Chicago made my heart sing.

“Of course,” I replied assuming that my husband Greg wouldn’t mind getting up at 5am on a Saturday for such an auspicious occasion.

We pulled into Bob’s place shortly before 7am and right as it started to rain. We listened to a few stories about the chickens roaming free in Bob’s yard and the shiitake mushrooms growing nearby in the downed white oak trees. No one seemed to notice the rain, including the chickens.

Bob gently placed our hive in the trunk of our yuppie car. A piece of foam was tightly wedged into the hive entrance to ensure the bees didn’t escape in transit. The hive contained approximately 30,000 bees, their queen (who we spent the car ride home trying to name…stay tuned), and five full frames that contained all the bees would need to get started in Chicago.

Bob offered a few last-minute instructions as we closed the trunk. And I still had a few questions.

“Are these Carnelian or Italian bees?” I asked.

“Nope, these here are Hoosier Bees,” Bob said. “We’ve been raising our own bees for years now. The Hoosier is a very gentle bee.”

Exactly what I had hoped given that we’d be spending an hour together in the car ride home. Would a decidedly rural Indiana bee enjoy life in Chicago? Time would tell. But with just one hive I knew we’d be crushed if the bees didn’t make it.

Our Hoosiers and their unnamed queen were introduced to their new home, the second story deck of our home, by 8am.

Greg removed the foam plug without incident. I think we both were expecting the bees to come angrily gushing from the hive in droves. Instead, it was more like a trickle, one, two, then five more. They flew around the hive tentatively as we watched from a nearby window. New bees learning to fly? Or simply another species behaving as humans would if we woke up in a foreign land?

And now we wait again. Bob suggested we give the bees ten days before we open the hive and check on their progress. All weekend we made excuses to go upstairs so we could check on the bees. When we weren’t staring at the hive, we were walking the neighborhood, imagining we were Hoosier bees. What would we be drawn to? The Catalpa trees in full bloom? The vibrant lilies dotting nearly every flower garden we passed? We saw our neighborhood in a whole new light. I had a newfound appreciation for the neighbor who seldom mowed his lawn – it was full of blossoming clover. And I harbored a stronger disdain for the one with the perfect grass peppered with neon caution signs to keep pets and children away because it had just been chemically treated.

Alas, our urban beekeeping adventure has begun. We may be inexperienced, but we didn’t undertake this lightly. Still, it’s hard not to worry when you’re trying to raise bees in the third largest city in the US. But for now, we’re taking it one hive, one Hoosier bee and one day at a time.

For more updates on our bee adventure and honey recipes, check out Sweet Hive Chicago!