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.

Hive Installation Glitch

Most of the time when something goes wrong in a hive, I'm quite clear that I've made an error (and anyone who has been following this blog knows that I have made many)

Every once in a while I'm not totally responsible for the bee messes that can happen in my hives.  Last Sunday and Monday I installed two packages - one in my own backyard and one at the Chastain Conservancy.  Generally the beekeeper would go back into the hive in about 3 - 5 days to see if the queen has been released from the queen cage.

However, both we've had bad weather ever since and (good news for me) my office practice has been very busy so I haven't had any free bee-ing hours during the few times when it was warm enough to open a hive.  Over the weekend our highs were in the 40s and it was pouring rain on Saturday as well as cold.  We can't get into the Chastain apiary on Sundays.

So now it's Monday - one week from installation - and I have not opened either hive to see if the queens were released.  Hopefully they each were and all is well, but you never know.  The temperature is going to be in the freezing range, really until Friday, so the chance of opening the hives is slim.

So here are the various scenarios:  The queen has been released and the hive is functioning with an empty queen cage in the hive.  That shouldn't be a problem at my home hive because I wedged the queen cage between frames:

But at Chastain, I set the queen cage on the bottom bar of a frame (one of the advantages of using foundationless frames).  There if she has been released, the queen cage is in the way and they may have built crooked comb around the cage, throwing off the symmetry of their comb building:

It won't be in the 60s until Friday and I'll be out of town, but Julia will open the Chastain hive that day and remove the queen cage and check to make sure she was released, but I won't be able to do a thing between now and then because of the weather.

Atlanta has the strangest weather.  We don't have winter until March and now it's the week after the first day of spring and we are having the coldest week since March of last year.

Creative Entrance Reducers

In Billy Davis' talk to our bee club, he emphasized the importance of entrance reducers.  He stated that the use of entrance reducers and keeping robber screens on the hives at all times stopped robbing in his apiaries.  So I am taking him seriously and trying it this year.

I've had two rather humorous experiences so far.  First at Morningside, the men who live in the house beside the community garden (where my hives are) are complaining that my bees are disturbing their use of their hot tub.  They are nice guys and supply water to the community garden, so we want them to stay happy.  I wrote them that there are five beekeepers within a mile of the community garden and that my bees are highly likely not to be the only ones visiting their hot tub.

However, to begin to address the problem and hopefully to prevent my needing to move my hives, I put a Boardman bottle of water on each hive.  I put a teaspoon of Chlorox in each bottle and a few drops of lemongrass oil to entice the bees to get their water at home.  However, I also wanted to reduce the entrance as per Billy Davis.  The Boardman bottles took up space and I don't have entrance reducers that short so I did something that I had read about on a beekeeping forum.  I used wine corks:

The bees fell all over themselves as they learned the new entrance but then calmed down.  I also put the same corks on the hive that I made from the Colony Square nuc the week before.   This photo was taken just before I left the Morningside hives.

I do wonder what the gardeners will think of all the wine corks - possibly that I really like wine!  But it is serving the purpose and looks like fun, doesn't it?








After the corks, I was really tired - not from putting in corks, but because we had done a lot of bee work already.  Jeff and I had already done our splits that morning; I went to the Morningside Garden berfore the splits to work on my plot there; and I was anticipating moving the hives in a few hours that night.  I knew the 3-box hive at Morningside needed a new box, but I just wanted to go home for a couple of hours and not do bees.

I sat on a stump by the hives and watched the bees for about 10 minutes.  Then I started for the car, telling myself that I'd get to it another day.  But I was already there and had already carried the box and all my bee stuff up to the hives.

I sat another second and then opened the hive and got to work.  I had brought a box of half empty frames and half drawn frames.  I checker-boarded these frames with the frames in the box below.  As I lifted out the seventh frame in the box on the hive, there was the queen!  What was she doing in the top box and on comb that looked like it was for honey storage - too large a cells for worker bees?

I got a little concerned that the reason she was there in that box was because the bees were running her around to get her ready to swarm.  She does look a little skinny!  However, skinny or not, she is certainly a pretty sight, I must say.  As is the beauty of the brand new wax and the festooning bees.















So I decided it was a good sign to reinforce my staying to add the box.

That was my funny entrance reducer story #1.  My second story happened on Sunday afternoon.  After the big split Saturday, on the next day (Sunday), I drove to Lula, Georgia to get a package of bees from Don Kuchenmeister for our teaching hive at Chastain Conservancy.

First I drove up to Rabun County to see if the bees there had lived through the winter.  Remember the one hive had been destroyed by what, I don't know.  The other was a hive that was populated on its own by a swarm last spring.  Those bees were alive in December, but Rabun county is 125 miles north of Atlanta and they have had a cold winter and some snow.

I found the hive dead, full of honey, with no bees at all in the hive except for about 20 on the bottom board.  I left the hive set up to possibly attract another swarm from the feral hive that lives in the wall of the nearby school building.

Then I picked up my package from Don - actually he had an extra one that I also bought to replace the Rabun hive, since I need a hive there and don't have confidence in my splits.  I couldn't drive another hour north to Rabun again, though, so I took both packages home.

I installed the first package in my backyard.

As I am getting ready to install the bees, I am thinking of Billy Davis.  So before I put in the package, I equipped the front of the hive with a robber screen as close to the one Billy had as I could do with my landing being slightly different from his.

Then I installed the package and stepped back to view my "great job."

And then there was my moment of realization, my Ah-Ha of the day.  A package consists of several pounds of bees (three in this case) and an unknown queen in a queen cage.  These bees aren't attached yet to the queen - they were only dumped in the package yesterday.  So the bees are no different than robber bees.  Without the pull of the queen pheromone, they have a hard time finding a way into the hive.  Attached to the queen, resident bees can negotiate the robber screen and undaunted, enter the hive from the side opening of the robber screen.

DUH.  My bees were flying at the hive in every direction and not finding the hive entry.

So I removed the robber screen and allowed the wayward bees to find their to-bee-queen and will wait to install the robber screen!

But I do plan to put them on every hive this year.  I lost my two biggest hives last summer to robbing and I am not having that happen again, if I have any possible way to influence that occurrence.

Why We Feed Package Bees

When my daughter Valerie was about 12, we had a reverse surprise party for her birthday.  Early on a Saturday morning, we drove a van to each of her friends' houses, woke the friends up and took them to our house for a surprise breakfast and birthday party.  The friends (their mothers were all forewarned) were totally caught off guard and came in their pajamas without any preparation.  It was a great party and they were glad to be together, but nobody was prepared because that is what defines a surprise.

Package bees are totally unprepared to be dumped into the packages.  They don't know it's coming - just one day their beekeeper takes them and puts them in a 2 or 3 pound package with a bunch of other bees who are equally surprised.  Shut up with strangers plus an unknown queen, they are taken on a journey with no preparation.  They probably don't have any fun unlike Valerie's friends did at her party.

Bees who swarm are ready for the journey.  Ahead of going, they run the queen back and forth through the hive to exercise her and to get her a little thinner for her swarm flight.  The bees who are leaving gorge themselves on honey and hold it in their honey stomachs so they are ready to make wax the minute they find a new place to live.  Like good scouts, they practice the "be prepared" motto to a "t."

So when you install a package of bees, you have to feed them.  Ordinarily I don't feed bees frequently but I do feed packages when I install them.  In essence a package of bees is a totally unprepared artificial swarm.

The packages I installed on Sunday had completely emptied their 2 quart Rapid Feeders when I looked into the hives on Thursday.  I refilled the feeders and probably that will be the end of it.  I only want them to have enough syrup to draw the wax they need to fill the brood box.

After that, the nectar flow is going strong in Atlanta and they will manage well without my help.

I Should Bee Happy, but I Bee Tired

What a long bee day!  By the time I left home to drive to Rabun County today, I had already hived three bee families - the swarm and two packages at Morningside.  The drive to Rabun didn't result in hiving any bees, but I still had three more packages to install.

When I got back to Atlanta around 4:30, I met Jeff at Chastain to install a package in a hive there.  Julia and Noah were there installing their two packages.  We have these bees thanks to Julia who drove up toe Lula yesterday to pick them up from Don Kuchenmeister (brought home five packages for me - thanks so much, Julia).

Julia installed her bees in equipment very kindly donated by Leslie Gerber who felt bad about our losses at Blue Heron due to the vandalism and our general bad luck at the Blue Heron.  I have donated equipment too from Lisa who gave us her hive for Blue Heron and a set of 8 frame boxes.  I'll be using her boxes on my hive at Chastain, but forgot it today for the install.

So here's my day:

8:30  Collect the swarm from my azalea
9:15  Mix up sugar syrup for bees at Morningside
9:30  Pack car with equipment and bees and go to Morningside Community Garden to install two packages there
10:30  Return home and install collected swarm into top bar hive
**Left swarm to gather in collection box while I installed hives at Morningside
11:00  Mix up more sugar syrup to take to Rabun County, pack car for drive to Rabun County with two packages of bees and equipment for install
**Reminded self to take sugar syrup in a spray bottle, my pocket knife, a "church key" to open the jars of syrup that come with the package, and lunch for the road
11:30  Drove to Rabun County - ate lunch as I drove - no time otherwise
1:15 Arrive at Community Garden and find that I don't need to install bees there - a swarm has moved in - so I just inspected the hives - good laying queen in both hives
2:15 Stop at mountain house literally for 10 minutes to check on things there
2:30 Drive back to Atlanta (still with packages in the car)
4:40 Meet Jeff at Chastain and install bees there
5:30 Drive home to install two more packages of bees at home
6:45 ALL DONE - what a BEE DAY

Since I've posted photos of the swarm and Rabun County in two earlier posts, these are pictures of the installs at Morningside, Chastain and my house.

Installing Two Packages in Rabun County

I had a crazy Monday.  I picked up two packages of bees, drove to Rabun County, cleaned out the dead hive, installed the two packages, drove back to Atlanta and ran a group at my office at 5 PM on Monday.

I put the packages in hives with a mix of old comb from foundationless frames from last year and new foundationless frames with wax strips.

These packages were so difficult to work with for four reasons:

1. The packages themselves were put together with screen wire that extended past the edges of the wood in a sharp row of extensions of wire.  I was working bare-handed and really tore up my arms and hands on these edges
2. The queen cage had this circle of aluminum over the cork at the candy end.  It was too thick a material to put a thumb tack through.  This presented a challenge in determining how to secure the cage in the hive.
3. The syrup container was located as it usually is but instead of being in a circle cut out to fit the can, there was an extension opening between the syrup can and the queen cage, so while I'm trying to lift the syrup container and get the queen cage, bees are coming out of the opening and crawling all over the place.
4. The cover over the syrup can and queen cage wasn't simply stapled in but rather was nailed with a 1 1/4 inch nail - hard, hard to pry up with the hive tool.

I was anxious to try to get the syrup can out the way my Virginia mentor, Penny, has suggested by using duct tape as a handle.  It is SO difficult to pry up the syrup can.  The idea of easing it out with duct tape was really appealing.

The problem with duct tape is that bees can stick to it.  

On the first hive I pulled a piece of duct tape, taped one end to the top of the syrup and pulled from the sticky other end.  Of course a couple of curious bees died flying onto the duct tape (Death by Duct Tape!).

So on the 8 frame installation, I taped the duct tape to the top of the can and then made a handle that was stuck to itself (no exposed sticky surfaces).  So no bee deaths the second try.

Here's a slide show of the installation.  I was by myself, and although I set up the camera on a tripod,  I didn't get as many pictures as usual.



I'm going back to the Rabun County Garden on Thursday to see if the queen is released and if they are doing well.

I felt pretty good about this installation.  I remembered how to handle the feed and put it OVER the inner cover.  I was worried because there was a little space between the upper box on the 8 frame hive and the 10 frame inner cover, so I put an upside down frame there temporarily to block the opening.   I didn't want to create a side opening in the hive. When I come back,  I'll have the right sized inner cover.   

Installing Ten Packages at Linda T's Bees

Last weekend we installed ten packages of bees into our ten new hives.  We fed each installed hive one gallon baggie of sugar syrup.  We left the bees and will return this weekend to see how they have fared.

Here's what we did to install the packages.  At each hive we put an empty super on over the hive box.  The function of this super is to contain the bees as they are shaken into the hive.  The empty super also serves as a surround to allow interior feeding of the bees both with a baggie feeder and with the jar of syrup that came with them.

Then we pried off the wooden cover over the syrup, worked the syrup feeder out of its place, removed the queen cage.  We took the cork out of the candy end of the queen cage and wedged the cage, screened wire down, between two frames near the center of the hive.  We also tacked it just to be sure.

Next we shook in the bees and either added the baggie feeder before or after adding the bees.

We'll check on them on Saturday this week and see if the queens have been released.

I was working hard through this process and didn't take as many pictures as I often do....but FWIW, here they are:

There are 120,000 Bees in my Kitchen

When Julia and I arrived at my house we parked my car in the carport and opened all the doors and windows.  Maybe I would just leave it there, all opened up until tomorrow morning when it was time to go to S Georgia.

We went to lunch (in Julia's car) and worried about the bees - it was supposed to be 80 degrees today in Atlanta and what if they got too hot?  So over lunch, Julia suggested that I take them into the house two at a time, maintaining the nailed-together status.  Maybe, she said, I could slide them onto something like a cookie sheet.  Then it dawned on me - my pizza peel!  Nothing like re-purposing a kitchen utensil for a beekeeping purpose!

Here I am sliding two packages onto the pizza peel.



We did have to saw one set of four boxes apart (I'll duct-tape them back together in the AM) But otherwise they all came into the house easily on the pizza peel.



And then my kitchen was FULL OF BEES!  My dogs didn't know quite how to make sense of this.

One industrious little bee (see the lower right of the package below) walked all over the screen trying to find a way to remove a sliver of wood from their living space.



So here's how it sounded in my kitchen at 4 PM on March 18, 2011:

Picking up Bees from Don (aka Fatbeeman)

Today Julia and I drove to Lula, Ga to pick up bees from Don. She was getting a package for Blue Heron and picking up another for a friend. I was picking up 10 packages for Linda T's Bees in South Georgia and getting two packages for another friend.

When we arrived, Don was shaking a package into a nuc. He is using an empty medium nuc box as a funnel to help contain the bees as they are shaken.



Now he is taking the cork out of the candy end of the queen cage. He wedges the queen cage, screen wire down, in between two frames and leaves her for the bees to release. (The man in the white shirt just got stung right in the middle of his forehead).



Now Don is closing up the nuc before taking us to his basement to pick out our packages.



It's always fun to see Don in action. (The white-shirted man is trying to scrape the stinger off of his forehead!)

 
All told we were picking up fourteen packages in the back of my Subaru.  It's important that the bees not overheat in transit so Don nailed them apart using pieces of wood to keep the packages separate and to keep them upright.

With the car all ready to roll, I got Julia to take my picture with Don.

We drove back to Atlanta with a car full of bees and only a few loose in the car at the back window.

Bee Plans for 2011

This blog is to share my bee experiences with all of you but also acts as a journal for me.  So for the record, here are my plans for this year:

I've ordered two nucs from Jennifer Berry and will be installing both of those at Blue Heron or one at Blue Heron (assuming my hive there survives the winter) and one somewhere else.  They should be available the beginning of April.

I've ordered two nucs from Jerry Wallace (he's only selling locally in Atlanta) to provide bees for Stonehurst Inn on Piedmont in Atlanta where I will be the beekeeper.  I haven't written about this here, but I will in the months to come.  They are an environmentally friendly B&B in midtown Atlanta and want to serve their guests their own honey.  They have a perfect spot for two hives.  I'm going to be the beekeeper this year and their innkeeper is taking the short course at Metro Atlanta on the 22nd so she will be good at it and may take over in time.  For now, I'm the beekeeper and the bees and the hives belong to them.  Jerry didn't give me a pick up date, but I was his first order so I assume I'll get them end of March or beginning of April.

I've ordered 10 three pound packages from Don in Lula, GA (Dixie Bee Supply).  His will be available for pickup in mid-March.  His packages I've written about here before.  His bees are small cell and are not treated in any way.  I got his bees for my top bar hive and for my Rabun County hive.  I hope they make it through the winter.

Meanwhile these 10 packages are going to be part of a new enterprise.  My son-in-law Jeff (whose house is where Topsy lives) and his best friend Greg and I are going into the honey business, starting with ten hives of bees.  Jeff just got his MBA and has thought up a good business plan for this as well as had the idea.  Greg has the land - a farm south of Atlanta with a peach orchard on the farm next door.  And me, well, they like it that I am a Master Beekeeper and are relying on me for knowledge about the bees (!).

We plan to get these bees started, make splits in July so that we go into winter with 20 hives, and grow our business.  Hopefully in 2012, we'll have honey to sell.

Both of the guys are new to beekeeping and will be taking the Metro Short Course this next Saturday at the Botanical Garden.

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.

Install Number Two at my Daughter's House in Atlanta

This patient package has waited in the basement of my mountain house overnight after a drive in the car for an hour or so. Then today they went back in the car, waited while I installed the hive in Rabun County, and then drove two hours home to Atlanta, waited in the car while I had lunch.....before driving to Valerie's house about 30 minutes away.



I moved the top bars - first to make room for the queen cage (took out one bar) and second to make room for the bees (took out about three bars). I brought two jars of sugar syrup and Boardman feeders to put in the hive - don't think I remembered to take pictures.


On the edge of the hive were these bees still left from the hive who was installed (swarm) and then absconded the next day. I sprayed them with sugar water.


The package still looks good after all of its travel. You can see in the picture below that there are very few dead bees on the bottom of the package. I also sprayed these girls with sugar syrup and they quieted down immediately.



I tacked the queen cage to the third bar in and replaced the top bar above it.



I then dumped the bees from the package into the top bar hive.

I had the camera on a tripod and didn't get a great picture.

I replaced all the top bars, pulled the cork out of the entry on the side of the hive, placed the package in front of the hive entry, returned the bricks to the top of the hive and crossed my fingers.  The bees seemed to be orienting as I left.

I've installed nucs and swarms, but these were my first package installs.  It was so easy.  I know it's a bunch of bees who aren't sisters and who aren't related to the queen, but they seemed happy, nonetheless.  We'll see what Paul Harvey used to call "The Rest of the Story."  I hope it's a good one.

Don's bees seemed quite wonderful, the installs went well, and the bees seemed glad to be in the spaces both at Rabun County and in East Atlanta.  I have a lot of hope for both of these hives.

Two Packages, Two Installs - Let's hope for SUCCESS!

I had the privilege to stop in Lula, Georgia at Don Kuchenmeister's lovely beeyard to pick up two packages on Saturday. It was raining cats and dogs. Don had a ton of bees in his basement. I asked him to pick my two packages. Here he is holding the two packages of bees.



I've had a couple of telephone conversations with Don. He is a gem of a beekeeper. He colors outside the lines. He has lovely bees. These bees were so calm and easy to install. I want to go up and spend some time with Don. He only lives about an hour from my house and he's right on the way to my mountain house, so you can rest assured that I will be visiting him again.

BTW, he had PINK nuc boxes in his beeyard. His beehives were in a pine grove and he was about to go to work the hives in the RAIN. He's quite the renegade beekeeper, and I'd love to learn more from him.



I drove to Rabun County where I was supposed to install the bees and then give a talk to the community gardeners. However, the weather (part of the system that spawned the tornado in Yazoo City, MS) was in Georgia all day yesterday. I gave my talk to the gardeners (Meet the Bee, I called it!), but I couldn't install the bees until this morning.

Today I set up the hive box and took out two frames in preparation for the installation. I've, BTW, never installed a package in my beekeeping career. So I was a little nervous.

First I sprayed the bees (who spent the night in the basement of my mountain house) with sugar syrup. They immediately calmed down.



I wasn't sure if the queen cage was secured so I put a tack in the tape that secured it.  I've seen videos on the Internet with the beekeeper dropping the queen cage into the bottom of the package as he/she lifts out the syrup can.

Then I pried up the thin piece of wood serving as a top.



I pulled up the can of syrup which was still quite full, and then pulled up the queen cage. I took the cork out of the candy end of the queen cage.

This wasn't the easiest thing I have ever done - it was hard to pry up the staples.  But I succeeded.  Then I found that the queen cage was also stapled.  I have an Italian hive tool which has a curved end, perfect for prying up the staple in the tape holding the queen cage.

I took the queen cage and hung it into the hive body by tacking the tape to the top of a frame.  Then I turned the package upside down and dumped the bees in.  I had to slant the package back and forth a little to get all of them to leave it and go down into the hive.

Then I returned the two frames to the box and closed it up.   I  put a shim around the top to contain a baggie feeder of sugar syrup to help the bees get started.

I hope this will help these bees since I can't come back until Sunday, May 1.  

I left the hive with the almost empty package container in front of it to leave any errant bees a chance to get with their queen.  I put a brick on top to secure the hive top.  And then I drove back to Atlanta until next Sunday when I come back to check up on them.

They are behind and back of the community garden and I hope they don't draw too much attention.  See them in the back in the center of the picture.  I hope they are of great benefit to the gardeners!