HOW TO INSTALL PACKAGE BEES INTO A HIVE

So here is the process I went through on Saturday and Sunday.
Lots of pics, be forewarned!  

I drove to the apiary (I love that word) on a gray, overcast day, hoping the rain would hold off (it did).  At the shop, there were packages of bees with queens waiting for their new homes.  Each package had the name of the owner on it so I found ours right away.

They were loaded into the back of the Jeep.  I wanted to use the Fiat, but it's a small car and 20,000 passengers might not fit, LOL.  Driving with humming bees in the back was an interesting experience.  As I stopped at a light, I realized I was one distracted driver away from making the nightly news.

Prior to leaving, a 5th Generation apiarist gave us a live demo on hiving.  He had this great idea to make sure the queen stays.  For the first week or so, he suggests leaving a queen excluder on the bottom of the hive.  The workers can come and go but she can't.  Great idea, so I set ours up that way.

His other method, less stressful on the bees when being 'installed' was to place the package box into the hive box for the first 24 hours.  I simply removed some of the frames to make room, more on that in a bit.  Oh, and I had a spray bottle mixed with sugar water, it calms them as they slow down to eat.

Here's another use for canning jars!  This is called a BOARDMAN FEEDER.  It mounts at the front entrance of the hive and uses an upside down jar filled with sugar water.  Tiny holes in the lid (it comes that way) allow the bees to go underneath and get the 'food'.

The first thing you do before installing the package is to take out the queen cage.  The queen is in a small cage that has a candy plug at one end, covered by a cork.  You remove the cork, exposing the candy stopper to the bees.  They will eat through the candy to get to the queen.  This takes a few days and the time allows them to adapt to their new queen.  Her cage has a little strap that you staple to one of the frames.  You can see the queen excluder below the frame she is attached to (metal wire).

Next comes the new part that he demonstrated.  You put the package carrying all the bees inside the hive and open it.  I was also taught to take a scoop full of bees and 'sprinkle' them over the queen cage.  Needles to say, I couldn't do this AND take a photo at the same time, ha.

Lastly, you put the inner cover on, the roof (or outer cover) on top of that and just leave them alone.  You can see here that a few already started coming out to explore their new home and surroundings. 

Flash forward 24 hours and here it is on Sunday.  I removed the roof and inner cover and pulled out the package.  Sure enough, they were almost all out of the box (will always have a few stragglers).  I simply put the box in front of the hive and in about two hours, it was empty.

In the space where the 'bee box' was, I put the frames with foundation back in.  See where the bees are all clustered?  This is where the queen is!  They are working hard to take care of her and get her out of 'queen jail', ha.  I used my bee brush to gently move them out of the way and put the top back. 

Setting up Langstroth Hives

Here they are, all back together and as you can see, happily gathering around for some dinner.  Believe it or not, I did all of this work without my bee suit.  This will probably be the only time I do that though.  I made slow, gentle, and confident movements, as is always suggested when working with bees.  Never get in a hurry.  I was wearing jeans, long sleeve shirt, gloves and a hat.  Our instructor told us that the bees are at their most docile at this point as they have no real hive to protect, no honey stores to guard, and at this point, no real queen that they are bonded to.  

Now we wait.

Oh, and in case you missed it (late post last night) CLICK HERE to see what we named our hives/queens.

I am off today and will go out to refill the feeder and make sure all is well with the hives in general, and then I will probably go out once more again Wed/Thur before the weekend.  The last step, after about 7 days (which will be Saturday), is to make sure the queen is still there, out of her cage, and then I can remove the excluder (because now she should stay put) and then just leave them alone and let them do their thing.  Bees don't require you to check daily as it creates disruption to the hive.  It sure is tempting though to peek inside!

I know I said this the other day but I'll say it again, it truly was a magical experience.  One of the awesome life experiences I can file away in my mind.  It  made me nervous at first but it was exhilarating at the same time.  

As a friend recently told me, "keeping bees is one of the best ways to be a steward of the land we all share".  So true!

Thank you for bearing with us through the excitement leading up the bee arrival.  Bees might not be everyone's cup of tea, so to speak, but I hope these posts help anyone else just starting out with a Langstroth hive.  I'm still learning myself so I'll keep it up until I, hopefully, become an 'old pro'.  If anyone visiting here is seeking more information, click the "bees" label/tag at the bottom of this post or over to the right under "labels".  Tomorrow we go back to other, regular topics, with bees thrown in as updates happen, ha.  Oh and 2nd Man always likes to draw the names for the giveaway so we'll do that either tonight or tomorrow, depending on what time we get settled in for the evening.

Hope you had an exhilarating weekend too!