Melrose Plantation

MELROSE
PLANTATION
Italian
honey
bees

It started with a cheery telephone call early in the morning from the post master at Lancaster Post Office.

"They're here," Steve, our post master announced to Robert.

"Oh, good, we'll be by to get them," Robert said.

Noon came and went and still no Robert so a different person at the post office telephoned.

"Please come get these, today!" she urged.

"Okay, right," said laid back Robert.

About an hour before closing of the post office, I answered the telephone and it was the assistant post mistress frantically telling me that we must come to the post office.

Off Robert finally went to collect our odd package. The post master saw Robert and said

"Oh, good, at last you've come. I was getting nervous."

As Robert and Steve chatted about this cargo that was now sitting on the counter, other postal customers came up to the counter and then slowly backed away. They weren't as excited as we were about the colony of Italian honeybees with a queen

Robert had given me for my birthday this year. Three pounds of live bees had been sent from Alabama in a wire cage with about as many "hobo "bees on the outside

just enjoying the ride as there were hundreds inside.

They are enhancing Melrose Plantation's menagerie and cultivating very intimate relationships with our

roses

clover

dandelions

flowering weeds

and sunflowers.

Now I have an excuse not to hate dandelions, the bees love it.

So, I've made a slate marker for the dandelions and other "weeds" we otherwise so anxiously "edit" from the garden.

This week the bees have been "sitting on their front porch "to cool down from their white hive we keep in a woods between two fields.

What a great learning experience for us since we've been described as "busy as bees." In fact, I had wanted to name our new home "Glory Bee" if it didn't have a name. Wouldn't that be fun to answer the telephone "Glory Bee Farm. This is a busy bee Bennett. Hi honey!"

Lucky for you Melrose already had a moniker.