  We present a general construction of the spin content of the Bethe-Salpeter
amplitudes (covariant wave functions) for heavy hadrons with arbitrary orbital
excitations, using representations of the Lorentz group. These wave functions
incorporate the symmetries manifest in the heavy quark limit. In the baryonic
sector we clearly differentiate between the $\Lambda$ and $\Sigma$ type excited
baryons. We then use the trace formalism to evaluate the weak transitions of
ground state heavy hadrons to arbitrary excited heavy hadrons. The
contributions of excited states to the Bjorken sum rule are also worked out in
detail.
