50% on Derby Day

Saturday was the day that we had scheduled to take a look inside our two hives to see how things were progressing. Saturday morning I had taken a walk in the woods and came back through the meadow where the hives are. One hive was in the sun and there was obviously activity - bees going in and out - the other is in a shadier location, so I thought perhaps the bees are sleeping? That hive was the more docile of the two when we installed the bees, so maybe they are quieter???

Saturday afternoon John and Reg came over and we all suited up to take a peek inside. We started with the quieter hive.... a little smoke, then we took off the outer cover and the inner cover and low and behold - NO BEES AT ALL! They had absconded! What a huge disappointment. John and Reg said there is no explaining it - sometimes that just happens.

We looked inside the other hive and things are very busy in there - comb being pulled, a little honey, no capped brood yet. We will check on them again later this week. We saw the queen, so things are cool there.

As for the other hive...there are a few alternatives. We can look for the bees in the woods - we might find them, although that is unlikely since it has been cold and they are probably inside a hollow tree. Talk about a needle in a haystack! John knows someone that might have a nuc that we can get. Tomorrow night is the beekeeper's meeting so we might find someone there who can sell us some bees.

Sheesh!

The bees are here!

The bees arrived! We had the bees delivered to a friend who used to be a postman and who is home during the day. I had expected a call from the Post Office that said, "we have a package for you. Come get it NOW!!!" Sure enough Bill received a call from the P.O at 7:30 so he picked up the package. He fed them during the day and we met to install thhem at about 6:00 pm. Our neighbors. John and Reg, who are beekeepers came down to assist with the installation. I also found lots of info on the internet on how to get the bees into the hive - there seems to be a million opinions on everything to do with bees. The site "Beemaster" had a lot of good pictures.

When I got home I quickly whipped up a batch of sugar syrup only to discover that we won't need it until we go in the hives on Saturday to chack on how things are going.

We took all of the gear down to the meadoow where the hives will be located. The hive bodies were all ready for the bees. We stuffed the hive entrance with grass to keep the bees confined once they were installed. We all suited up and then carefully pried the top off of the box. The queen and her attendants were in a small cage in the bigger box of bees. There was a cork on one end of the queen cage - when that was pried off it revealed a piece of candy that stops up the hole. Reg took a tool and made an indentation in the candy. The bees will eat it out to release the queen.

The queen cage was suspended in the hive and then the bees dumped (literally) into the hive. The sugar syrup that came with the bees was set on top of the frames inside the empty super on top of the hive body. The inner cover was put on and then the lid.

We ordered a Russian queen and an Italian queen. The hive with what we thibnk is the Russian queen was fairly calm and peaceful (although you could hear LOTS of buzzing!) but the other hive with the Italian queen was really active and was buzzing all around the hive.

We were so excited we forgot to take pictures. We FINALLY have bees!!!!

Hives are ready - sort of!

This has been a crazy couple of weeks and it turned out to be MUCH more complicated than I had guessed! Both Joe and I have been SO busy - we finally turned toward getting the foundation in the hive frames and realized that it wasn't going to be a snap. First of all we are using hives we got from a friend and we needed to clean them to make way for the new foundation. Lots of scraping ensued. The next problem is getting the foundation wired into the brood frames. I ordered a little device to assist with the wiring and neither Joe nor I can figuure out how it is supposed to help! Joe ended up wiring ALL of the brood frames. I am still working slowly on the honey supers, but it is definitely slow going.

The bees are enroute, so hopefully they will arrive today and the weather will cooperate and we can hive them. I still have to make the sugar syrup to feed them. I am excited about the bees coming (and a little scared - I hope we can keep them alive!) I am not even thinking about the honey - I am just trying to avoid massive death!