How to buy bees

I think there must be many ways to buy bees; I've been looking at some beekeeping catalogs and they all seem to be able to fed-ex them to your door. Maybe through the farmer's market or the local beekeeping association too. We didn't go through all that though, because Dr. Drone knows a guy.

Here's what we did do: Mr. Holt, Mad-scientist Dr. Drone, and I piled into a car.
We drove to the back corner of a Lowe's parking lot
We avoided the mama goose nesting in a tiny divider and her anxious mate
We walked up to a giant trailer that wa literally FULL. OF. BEES.
We handed a guy a sweaty wad of cash and received a box. of. bees.
I've never bought drugs off the street, but I imagine it must go down just like this.

The bee box looked a lot like this, though I'm sorry I didn't bring my camera to capture the truly bizarre nature of this transaction. I'm sorry- it's my first time..



The can hanging from the top has bee food in it, some kind of simple sugar syrup I think, and somewhere in the writhing, humming mass of bees in the middle is a tiny box containing a queen and her attendants. The Disney princess were a little after my time, but bee royalty is something I can really get behind. Apparently we had just purchased three pounds of bees and the queen, locked in her tiny box, is the key to getting them to stay in the new home we prepared.