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!!!!