Hiving and Checking for the Queen

The bees arrived Saturday, and it couldn't have been a worse day for it! It was really cold, hovering not much above freezing, and was raining and snowing off and on all day. Not good for the bees! But there wasn't much to do other than move forward. I mean, the weather wasn't supposed to change for at least a few days, and they couldn't stay in their package forever!

They come in a wooden box, two sides of which are screen. There is a hole in the top which is plugged during transport with a can of bee food (basically very thick sugar water) that has tiny holes punched in the bottom. The bees feed off this sugar water while they are trapped in the package and unable to get to pollen. They're fine in there, but they're obviously better off in their hive.

 

The queen is in a tiny version of the larger package, which is suspended from the top of the package. This is so that the bees begin getting used to her scent and so that they can take care of her, but she remains separated from them. Because the bees from packages are paired with the queen shortly before they're sent out to their new homes, you want the bees to have a little time to get used to their new queen. Otherwise they might kill her.

I picked them up early that afternoon and kept them in the garage so they'd be a little warmer until C got home. We put sugar water (a 1:1 ratio) in a spray bottle and spritzed the sides a few minutes before we went out to the hive. We first removed the queen cage, covering the now exposed hole that the bee food can was plugging. There is a small hole in the bottom of the cage with a cork in it. C removed that cork, immediately covering the hole so the queen couldn't get out, then I shoved a mini marshmallow into the hole. Don't worry! The plan is that the bees will eat through the marshmallow and let her out. Then we dumped them out of the package and into the hive. Literally just dumped them. C shook the package around a little until almost all of them were out in the hive. The temperature did work in our benefit a little in that it made the bees a lot less likely to fly around during the hiving process. Unfortunately I did not get any pics of this process. Maybe next year. Anyway, we closed up the hive and left them to get the queen out.

We checked back in this afternoon (Wednesday) to be sure that the queen had indeed been let out of her cage as planned. We found a huge wad of bees suspended from two of the top bars. While we didn't see her, it's most likely that the queen was in the middle of that wad. And hopefully they are working on making comb. We closed the hive back up and we'll leave them again for about a week. If all goes as we hope they will have a good start on comb and there may even be some brood!

PS Have I mentioned our awesome bee suits? They're made for someone about 6" taller than me, but otherwise they're quite stylish. You should see the way people slow down and stare as they're driving by when we are walking across the yard in these babies. It's quite funny, really :)