I managed to get the bees installed today. I didn't feel overly confident. My car had quit on me earlier in the day (water in the fuel line) and I was in the middle of getting it taken care of when I stopped to install the bees.
Because the weather has been a bit wilder than normal this spring, the bees have been in the garage for two days waiting. Today was the first day with decent temperatures, and there was just a slight breeze, so I really wanted to get the bees in.
I tried to level a spot in between the lilacs, put down some paver stones and placed my bottom board on them. Then I put on a hive body with ten frames. I placed a second empty hive body on top of this as I was planning on doing a gentle release (simply opening the box inside the empty hive body and letting the bees make their way out.)
I got my feeder and cover ready. I made sure I had my gloves, safety glasses (my veils haven't come yet). And the bee brush. And the marshmallow.
Then I went in and made sugar water for them and filled up a spray bottle.
And . . . what else was I forgetting.
It was definitely exciting . . . but a little scary knowing that I didn't really know what I was doing. I'm grateful to know as much as I already do, but actually having seen this done would have been super helpful.
I brought the bees out in their box and sprayed them down with sugar water. I tried hard not to get them too wet, as I'd been cautioned about this. I had to knock the box pretty hard to get them (mostly) off the queen cage and feeder. They didn't like that much. I keep spraying, feeling bad, but not really having any other option. I struggled to get the queen cage slide out, but found her to be very active. I forgot to take a picture, but she's actually not significantly larger than the other bees, but she was very dark! I took out her cork, and crammed in the marshmallow. The bees will eat through the marshmallow in a matter of hours and free her.
I placed the queen cage in between two frames, in the lower hive body. All that was left to do was to put in the rest of the bees.
This is where I made a novice and impatient mistake. I should have just kept to my original plan of doing an gentle release, but there wasn't much clearance between the bee box and the feeder. Being impatient, and wanting to help the bees get down into the hive a quickly as possible, I tried to dump them out. About 2/3s of them feel into the hive, but there were still several thousand still in the box! I couldn't just put the box down without crushing a lot of bees. They were already agitated, so this really upset them. Within a few seconds there were 30-40 buzzing around me. I tried to work quickly, but couldn't get them all out of the way. Ahhhhh! I didn't panic, but I'm afraid I did kill quite a few. I didn't realize I could have left the box right outside the hive, so I put it in and put on the queen excluder and feeder. I poured in the sugar water as quickly as possible and put on the hive cover.
I quickly picked up my tools and left, hoping the bees were okay and would calm down.
Within just a few minutes they had and were busy licking up the sugar that was spilled on the outside of the hive. I also noticed them at work on the few Delphinium we had in the flowerbed.
I'm interested to see how they do. I'll have to try in a day or two to get the box out of the hive, and perhaps take off the extra hive body.
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