April 2008

My packages of bees were ready to pick up on April 16, 2008 and I went to get them. They arrive in screen boxes with a can of food (sugar suryp) and a little queen cage inside the box.....I had never handled a bee package before and was somewhat leery of 10,000 bees in a box. I had two boxes and two marked queens. The bee-man gave me some mini-marshmallows to put in the hole of the queen cage so she can eat her way out of the cage. No one told me to take a safety pin or a nail to remove the cork, so my queens had to stumble around with the cork in their little cage as they ate their way out. "Sorry girls," I said, "I have no idea what I'm doing, please forgive me." They escaped in the expected amount of time so I'm assuming they did (forgive me that is).

I had to get some new hive bodies, some more frames and another top and bottom board to add another hive to my collection of ONE from 2007, so now I have TWO. Assembly takes about ten minutes if you buy the parts ready to go like I did.

Now to pour the bees into the hive, or rather to shake them into the hive, well they rather liked the screen cage and lifting out the can of food to let them out of the box made my heart sing and my blood pressure rise. They didn't want to move so much but I got most of them out. Then I hung the little cage with the queen between the middle frames. Next I put on the inner cover, the feeders of 1:1 suryp, an empty hive box and the then the top cover. Whew, do all of that once more and I'm done in for the day, (I am stressed out by all these bees). The second hive went faster and more smoothly than the first, and then I put the opened and almost empty packages in front of their respective hives very close to the entrance. By 5:00 (that is quitting time for bees you know) all and I mean all but the few dead bees that you are supposed to expect were out of the boxes and into the hives for the night. I slipped in the entrance reducers and said "See ya in three days."

Thee days later: the queens had escaped, the mini-marshmallows had disapeared, the bees were all over the frames and an inch of the food had been eaten (the food is a suryp of one part sugar to one part water presented in quart jars, inverted with special lids with teeniney holes in a snowflake pattern, placed on a board with holes in it) this feeder is suposed to NOT cut their delicate tongues.....all was well in apiaryland for the novice beekeper. Thanks bees for knowing what to do. You remind me of all of my childhood aquariam guppies who came from the pet store already knowing how to swim!

Next bee check in two weeks.........