We installed the bees into their hives this morning.
It was a little nerve-wracking, so we read up a bunch and discussed our plan last night.
We also made up 10lb of sugar into sugar syrup (with a 1:1 ratio, it made 8 quarts).
Kristi coated the closed bottom tray of the hive with cooking spray; that’s supposed to catch any mites that fall down there, and give us an idea of whether the bees are healthy.
Of the two boxes, one was more grungy-looking, so without loss of generality, we chose to do that one first, and to put it in the western hive. Kristi got geared up with veil and gloves, I was standing by with the instruction book, and Cliff was on photography duty. Brett held the marshmallows and provided moral support.
The shipping boxes come with a queen box suspended in them, as well as a can of sugar syrup to feed the bees while they’re traveling. There were a hundred or so dead bees in each box, but both were pretty vibrant looking hives otherwise. Of course, what do I know?
Anyhow, you are supposed to whack the box pretty hard to make the bees fall to the bottom, then take out the can, then start pouring the bees into the hive.
That was a mistake.
As soon as Kristi whacked the box, the feeder can started pouring sugar syrup all over inside the box, which ended up making a sticky mess, and meaning that we left a bunch of bees stuck inside the box. In short, the first hive was a bit stressful, but we got the bees in, then worked on the queen (she was alive and moving around, with a white dot on her thorax). I popped out the cork holding her in her box, and popped in a marshmallow. In she went, along with several frames we’d removed to do the installation. We’d forgotten to leave one frame out (total of 9) while the queen is still in her box (her box hangs between the two center frames), so we had to uninstall one frame, coaxing bees away from it (there were about a dozen already wandering around the frame — interesting). The inner cover was next, then the sugar water feeders (4 quarts worth) inside the empty “upper deep” box, on went the outer cover, and Bob’s yer uncle, we had a beehive.
With one hive done, we moved on to the second. We took out the sugar can first this time, and got a so-so whack to dislodge the bees before they came crawling out the hole. The emptying took a little longer, but I think we got more of the bees out, because the box wasn’t super sticky. The queen also looked good, marshmallow was not in there as tight — I hope that’s OK. Inner cover, feeders, upper deep, outer cover, and we were done installing bees.
The two spare frames (one from each hive) went back to the shop. They’ll go in when we check the queens again on Monday, to confirm that the queens are free of their boxes.
The sugar water will stay there until the bees stop eating it, and the upper deep will remain empty (and above the inner cover) until the bees have drawn out most of the lower deep.
We stuffed some grass into the hive entrances to give the bees a little less area to defend.
Kristi’s pristine white veil and the white hive boxes are a little streaked with bee poop already — one wonders why people don’t make bee veils that are bee poop color. shrug.
When we looked more closely at the sugar water cans (that came out of the shipping boxes), one of them had a little filter and rubber gasket thingy to keep it from spraying syrup everywhere, and the other didn’t — we think it’s probably in hive #1. Hopefully we’ll be able to get it out later.
The weather has been a little iffy lately, so we worry about our new little charges. I hope they do OK, and can defend themselves against wasps, skunks, and who knows what else.
We are officially beekeepers now.