On Saturday, we were scheduled to pick up our bees around 11am out in Hillsborough. After breakfast at the farmer’s market, we ran a few errands and took the Honda out I-40 to Busy Bee. We opted to go with the honda because it has a trunk and the idea of sticking a three pound package of bees into the hatchback of Jill’s Subaru was a little disturbing.
We picked up the bees and put them in the trunk, along with a few stragglers whom came along for the ride. The queen and several attendants rode in the front in a small box with a marshmallow cork.
Once we got back to the house, we popped the trunk and started collecting our gear:
- Bee veils – check
- Bee shirts – Chris wearing a long sleeve dress shirt, Jill in a sweatshirt
- Smoker – got it
- Smoker fuel – we have the dried pine needles right here
- Hive tool – why? but yes, we’ve got a hive tool
- Deep hive body – of course, and we even removed 5 frames
Once we were all together, we took the queen’s box out and put some small nails into it in order to hang it in the hive. This didn’t seem to work, so we taped it using yarn. The queen stays in the box for several days while the bees work on eating the marshmallow in order to free her. In theory, it will take them several days to get her loose and by that time, they will have accepted her scent and recognize her as the queen of the colony.
After we put the queen in place, the moment of truth – dealing with three pounds of bees without freaking the hell out. I know in theory, bees are gentle, they don’t want to sting me, they really just want to build a home and stock up honey for the winter, but either a million years of evolution or a childhood with a few too many yellow jacket incidents makes my skin crawl to see that many bees.
The box containing the bees has a circular hole cut in the top and a jar of syrup is resting in it. There is a small wooden cover which holds everything in place. Using the hive tool (ah ha! it did have a purpose!), we pried the cover off of the box. Fortunately, the can of syrup is still keeping all of the bees in place. We then jolted the box to the ground to knock the bees off of the syrup, and carefully pulled the syrup can out of the box… immediately covering it with the lid. We opened the syrup and poured the remainder into the feeder, setting it aside. We then set the box into the hive in the place where the frames had been removed, slid off the lid, and put the hive feeder and hive top in place.
The sound of 3# (3000?) bees in a a hive is slightly terrifying. The entire box buzzed, but we were basically done for Saturday.
Sunday, we had to get the box out of the hive and put the frames back in. We got the smoker going and smoked the bees a touch. We took off the hive cover, removed the feeder (with bees all up on the inside feeding!) and looked inside. The ladies were already hard at work building out comb from the wax foundation they started with!
Jill bravely reached into the hive and lifted the box out. We put the frames back in place, one at a time and replaced the feeder and hive cover. We didn’t check the queen, because… well, because.
All in all, a successful weekend – we installed the bee package and no one got stung!
