Let's Consider the Package of Bees

When a beekeeper wants to get started with bees, there are five ways to get bees:  a nuc, a package, a swarm, an established hive, a cut-out from a building.  Most go with the first or second.  I've only bought nucs up until this, my fifth year.  This year I bought two packages.

Let's consider the package.  A package of bees is in a sense an imitation swarm.  However, the bees in a package are not necessarily sisters - usually they are shaken from a number of hives to get the pounds needed in the package. A pound of bees, FYI, contains about 3500 bees.  So a two pound package has about 7000 bees in it.  Also in the package is a queen who has not yet met her hive.  She is contained in a queen cage.  All of these unacquainted bees are dumped in the hive with the queen remaining in her cage until they eat through the candy and release her in three or four days.

If you have ever shaken bees off of a frame, you know that there are always a number of bees who cling to the frame and won't get shaken off.  When harvesting I have to use the bee brush to get these girls to leave the frame.  The clingers are usually younger bees.  The younger bees in the hive are the ones who make the wax from the glands on their thorax.

A swarm, on the other hand, represents the reproduction of the hive.  When a swarm leaves the hive, the bees comprising the swarm are engorged with honey for the journey.  In a swarm about 70% of the bees are 10 days old or younger, ready and developmentally at the stage to make wax.  The queen is known to all - for she is, in the first swarm out of a hive, their mother.  The swarm is staged for success because, after all, success of the swarm equals successful reproduction of the hive.

I'm finding that it is quite difficult to learn how to successfully pull off installing a top bar hive.  And I'm also now worrying about the package installed in Rabun County on foundationless frames in a Langstroth box.

Since the girls in a package are possibly past the developmental stage of making wax, is the hive doomed from the beginning if you are using foundationless frames?

I don't think I am going to look favorably at the idea of purchasing packages again.

I like the nuc because it is a mini-hive, already started.  And while you can make mistakes with the nuc (such as enthusiastically putting too many boxes on before the bees have built out their first box, as I did), the chances of success are greater.  They are more likely to swarm like our recently installed nucs at Blue Heron, but they don't usually abscond.

I love to get a swarm and although my friend gave me the swarm that I hived in the top bar hive a while back, I didn't catch it.  I would like to get one this year just for the satisfaction of starting a hive that wants to get up and running fast as it is developmentally driven to do.

But I'm not anxious to install another package.

The powdered sugar shake and Ghost Bees

I don't know if I have Varroa mites, but if I don't it will be a miracle since they're everywhere. The master beekeepers on the Beemaster's Forum have been advising that the beekeeper use a "sugar shake" in which you shake a one pound box of powdered sugar between the frames in the top brood box (so the sugar can fall through both levels of the box).

Here is a quote from Brian Bray - a well-established beekeeper on the Forum:

"Use powered sugar. Use a shaker of some type to dust the bees down between the frames. The powered sugar will knock off enough of the mites so you'll be have an idea of their concentration. You should shake every 10 days for a month to decrease their population before the winter. A SBB helps as the mites and the excess sugar fall through the hive. The sugar shake works because the mites are dislodged from the Bees as they groom themselves and each other to get rid of the sugar. The sugar is usually converted to stores."

Well, first I had to buy powdered sugar. There was some discussion about whether the powdered sugar had starch in it or not and both Brian Bray and Michael Bush, both wise beekeepers, in separate postings said, "IMO powdered sugar is the best." I have to confess that I spent some time on Google searching to find out what brand IMO Powdered Sugar is before I realized that they were both saying, "In My Opinion...." DUH.

So I found powdered sugar at Costco and then went to Target for a shaker. I bought a cocktail shaker because it would hold a pound of powdered sugar and I wouldn't have to refill it with bee gloves on. I started out with the shaker, but........several vigorous shakes and the top flew off and landed on the hives, disturbing the bees more than the sugar had. So I simply sprinkled it by hand.

I brushed it off the tops of the frames into the spaces between and sugar covered the bees. They looked like little ghost bees. Hopefully they will clean each other off, removing Varroa mites in the process.

Brushing off the bees to harvest the comb

When I first take a frame out of the super to harvest the comb, it is covered with bees. First I stand right in front of the hive from which the frame came and shake the frame hard at least twice to shake the bees onto the entrance of the hive.

Next I walk the frame away from the hive and over to the empty super where I am collecting the filled frames. I use my yellow bristled bee brush to brush the bees off of the frame. It's hard to take such a picture while I am by myself.

In the first picture you see the bee brush and the now almost free of bees frame.
In the second picture I am brushing the bees off of the comb. The brush is a blur. This is one of the advantages of the fact that my digital camera has a moment between my pushing the button and the picture actually occurring. I pushed the button with the brush in my hand and quickly (too quickly obviously) returned my brush to action by the time the shutter opened and closed!