The Ladies are in Residence!

I have been looking forward to this day as if it is Christmas! We drove 2 hours this morning to Better Bee and picked up 7 packages (2 are ours) of Italian bees with new queens. After dropping off 5 packages to other members of the Monadnock Beekeepers Association it was time to hit the books for a quick review.

After watching videos and reading about installing packages for 3 months, it's now time. Amazing how book knowledge is rarely as beneficial as practical experience. After assembling almost (an important word...) all of the tools, sprays and food, I practiced all of the steps I was going to do before donning a pullover jacket and veil. I sprayed the bees with a 1:1 syrup solution with 4tsp/qt of Honey-B-Good mixed in. It immediately calmed the bees (really made it so they weren't fanning) and I smacked the bottom of the first package on the hive frame to move the bees to the bottom. After prying the cover off the top, the queen cage and sugar can came right out of the package. Knowing I was supposed to pull the cork out of the cage, I proceeded to push the cork at the bottom of the cage in towards the queen. Okay, so I was nervous. No harm, no foul and luckily no injured queen! I think...

So now, I take off the metal disk covering the sugar plug (no book EVER mentioned a metal disk) and it dawns on me that the only thing I forgot was a way to hang the cage between the frames (see almost...). After a quick panic in the basement looking for nails (every size but the one I needed) I cut some wire from a spool I use to support the raspberries and placed it through the staples on the cage. Hopefully, I did a good job supporting it.

After, again, spraying the bees and knocking them to the bottom of the package, I poured 1/2 of the bees over the queen's cage and the rest into the empty space where I previously took out 5 frames to make room for the ladies. Though I had previously wondered what would make a relatively sane man do this, it was easier than I thought and the bees stayed calm through the entire adventure. After replacing 4 frames (the 5th goes in next week after the queen leaves her cage) I placed a 5" square paper towel soaked in vegetable oil (makes it harder for Varroa mites to stick to the bees) placed a pollen patty on the top of the frames, put on a top feeder and filled it with 2 gal of 1:1 sugar syrup with 1 tsp of HBH/qt mixed in. I positioned the telescoping outer cover and repeated everything again for the 2nd package (except I was prepared for placing the 2nd queen cage). I'm not sure about the bees but I was exhausted!

The bees in the 2nd package were VERY active during the entire process, much more so than the 1st package. Now that they are hived, the bees in hive 1 are out and active–fanning and starting orientation flights. Hive 2 seems much quieter. I did put entrance reducers on both hives, turned on the electric fence and was eaten by black flies while I sat back and enjoyed the show my bees put on as they get used to their new home. I'm actually now a beekeeper.