Installing a Package at Stonehurst

On Tuesday, I got an email from Stonehurst that our bees were ready for pickup at Mountain Sweet Honey in Toccoa, GA. I called Mountain Sweet and they said the bees needed to be picked up right away, so I drove up early Wednesday morning to pick up the two packages. Luckily I had the time and it was a pretty day for a drive. Also, the section of Atlanta I-85 which is one mile from my house had not collapsed and caught fire yet! That happened the next day.

So our bees at Stonehurst died during the winter of 2015. In 2016, a swarm moved into one of the hives and they chugged along but didn't make it through the winter. The owner really wanted bees there again, so she ordered a package of Italians and a package of Carniolans for this spring.

I haven't shown photos of a package installation in a while, so thought I'd share these.

I drove the bees back in the back of my car so when we got back to Atlanta one and a half hours later, they couldn't wait to be put in a hive. I stopped by my house and got two rapid feeders (because you have to feed packages). Packages of bees consist of bees who didn't know that they were leaving home when they woke up on the morning they were poured into a package. If they were swarming bees, they would have filled their bellies with honey in preparation for the swarm.

A package is an artificial swarm in a sense in that the bees have no comb or established brood. Instead they are a bunch of bees with a queen who isn't their mother. They have to draw wax and get started the minute they are installed but without honey in their honey stomachs, they have no resources to make wax. Thus, the beekeeper MUST feed a package.

So I picked up two rapid feeders, mixed up some bee tea, grabbed a squirt bottle of sugar syrup from my swarm kit, and got a couple of empty boxes to use as a funnel to pour the bees into the hive.

I set the packages on the ground while I worked on the hives. I squirted both boxes with sugar syrup on both sides to calm them and give them something to do.

I wasn't planning to do this on Wednesday, so I had to clean out both hives before installing the bees. This meant pulling off the boxes all the way to the ground to clean out the dead roaches, wax that had been consumed by wax moths and other detritus in the hive. I had brought clean new frames. I set each hive up with two medium boxes. Then I planned to leave the rapid feeder inside an empty medium box above the inner cover.

I pried off the wood cover and pulled out the feeder, shaking the bees back into the box and covering the hole with the wood. Then I gently pulled out the queen cage, again shaking the bees back into the box.

The queen cage was wedged between two frames (pretty easy to do in an 8 frame box). Then I put the "funnel" empty box above the two hive boxes and shook in the bees. Usually I bang the package on the ground to loosen the bees' grip so that it is easier to pour them into the hive.

I brushed the bees on the top edge into the box and put the top on to allow them to calm down while I installed the second package. I then returned to the hive and using my bee brush, got them down off of the funnel box. I then slid the inner cover on and put on the rapid feeder. I filled it with bee tea, put on the telescoping cover and left the bees to adjust to their new surroundings.

All of the bees never leave the package so I set the package up facing the hive so the remaining bees could go inside at their leisure.

I edited the above photo to rotate it, but in my new computer without Picasa, I can't get it to save my edit. Sorry you have to twist your head around, but I wanted you to see that the opening of the package faces the opening of the hive.

I went back on Friday and gave them more food and plan to go again on Sunday. But the tulip poplar started blooming today so our nectar flow has begun and I'll not feed them for much longer.

What a Bee Day! Installing a Package at Loganberry Heritage Farm

Today was a two-three post worthy day.  At the beginning of the day, I drove to a farm between Dahlonega and Cleveland, GA.  It's a beautiful place - Loganberry Heritage Farm - where chickens run free and cows graze.  Sharon, the owner and a beekeeper, has hives there that she has been managing naturally.  We tried to get together last year but she follows the lunar calendar for guidance in beekeeping and there never was a day that I could come that was also good for opening the bee hives.

I was free to drive up today, though, so I loaded my car with bee paraphernalia and headed for north Georgia.  As I drove up, I got a telephone call from Tom.  The bees in his yard were swarming.  I couldn't do anything until I was done with Sharon, so I told him I'd be back in Atlanta and at his house at 4:30.

When I arrived at Loganberry Heritage Farm, Sharon, in a beautiful garden hat, had just returned from picking up four packages of bees to install.  She wanted me to help her check her hives from last year and to help her install one package so she could do the rest without me.

We went to look at the existing hives first.  They were located high on a windy hill.  I could see no real bee activity.  Some bees were flying in and out of the third hive but the other two looked pretty bee-less.  Sadly, these three hives were all in bad shape.  One hive had honey but no bees.  Another hive had a cluster of dead and molded bees about the size of a saucer over three frames.  The queen was dead right in the center.  The last hive had about a baseball sized cluster of bees in a medium box.

Upon talking this through, she and I decided that in the cold of the mountains where she is, up on that hill is probably too cold for the bees to winter well and perhaps they needed a more sheltered location.  She thought she might try to rescue the baseball sized hive by moving it into a nuc box and seeing if they could build back up.  Because she doesn't have any other hives that are going, she can't add to the resources by putting in a frame of brood and eggs.  I think they will not survive, but maybe she can make it happen.

We then installed the package into her beautifully painted hives, each with a hive top feeder.

First the bees are sprayed with a bee tea that Sharon had made with honey.

Then she removed the cover to the package and lifted up the feed jar.

We put the queen in her cage on the bottom bar of an empty frame (before we placed her there we removed the cork at the candy end of the cage).

  

Then it was time to shake in the bees.  We used an empty box as a funnel through which to shake the bees (keeping most of them in the box instead of on the ground.)

Then we put back in the frames for the bottom box.  We put on her hive top feeder and the inner cover.  Then we put the jar of syrup over the inner cover hole and used another hive box to surround the feeder.  These bees will be well taken care of by Sharon in the days to come.