The Bees have arrived!
Our bees for 2011 have arrived after a devastating loss this winter with new hope for the bees. We got the call this morning so Tim rushed to the Post Office to pick them up, ironically exactly one year to the day we got our bees last year...
I rushed home from work today to empty the packages into the hives. In the picture to the right, you have to pry off the small piece of wood that holds everything into place with the trusty "hive tool". No beekeeper would be caught without one. This comes after smoking and spraying them with a little sugar water so they are not too mad.
Once the wood is off, you will find the sugar water can (the larger one) and the queen cage (the smaller one). The Queen cage is lifted and put into the hive. You have to removed the cork and the bees will eat thru to the sugar candy to get her out...
and this is how it looks when you are done, a successful hived package!
However as I opened the next one, I found there was many more dead bees and then when I lifted out the queen cage, I found that she had died with a couple of other bees in her cage. Thinking fast I combined the packages in hopes of saving all the bees. Without a queen or any eggs they could not have successfully survived. I have contacted the bee supplier and am awaiting their respones as to where I go from here...
Good luck with the new hives, Dawn. I miss having honey bees in the yard. I always grew up with hives - both at my parent's home in Seymour and my Grandparent's in Shelton. Our current property isn't ideal for hives, but someday I'll get back to it! Does PD in town know you're a beekeeper? We would sometimes get calls about swarms in town and go out with a super to try to get the queen and as many of the bees in the swarm as possible.
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