May 4, 2013

First, let me apologize for not being out here for several weeks....we went right from winter to a warm spring overnight....and so i have been attending to everything on the farm.....long days, with no energy to write in the evening.....with that being said.....we have started our new project for 2013.....BEES.....so now I will be blogging more frequently.....let's begin the BEE journey together.....

we used 2 local companies to help get us started.....Dadant Bee Co. and Napoleon Bee....both within 20 miles from the farm.....I will explain, and show pictures of all the components of a Bee Hive in a couple days...but for today....this is how you insert a PACKAGE of BEES into your hive....

first.....lay your cement pavers down, then your Bottom Screened Board, then the First DEEP Super (Hive Body) with 10 frames inserted......next you add the feeder holder and the mason jar filled with 1:1 sugar water mixture

then...you get suited up and take your box of bees to the hive.....the bees were $80 for a package...this includes approx 10,000 bees and 1 Queen Bee. We are colonizing 2 hives...so we were both able to do one.

Next.... take your hive tool and pry up the jar of food....the queen bee is in her own box and is attached to the wooden crate by a strap....we were careful to not drop her into the box of bees, only because we didn't want to have to reach into all the bees to pull her little box out.

this is the Queen Bee in her box.....it has a cork in the bottom to keep her in during shipping, we learned this

trick to release her into your hive on the Internet....remove the cork and insert a marshmallow

now.....you turn the bee box over and dump.....yep that's right....just dump!!!!

once you have removed as many as you can from the box....then you spread them

out with your hive tool so you can put the frames back in.

you insert the Queen Bee box in between the frames...the worker bees will eat the marshmellow out of the

bottom of her box to release her into the hive.....then you lay a pollen packet on top of the frames.

then you use your BEE brush to wipe off the bees on top of the frames and place on the outer cover.

1 down....1 to go!!!!

my turn went just as smoothly as Ross' did....I wasn't sure if I was going to freak out with

all the bees flying around....but in the suit it was easy....Ross didn't wear gloves and we

probably would have been comfortable with just a net over our faces.

here is a better angle of the bees coming out of the package going into the hive

once we were done...we leaned the mostly empty packages up against the

hives...the rest of the bees will make their way into the hive this evening.

we went back at about Dusk and all the bees are safely in the hive for the night.

we will check tomorrow to see if the queen has been released in both hives.

we found this in the bottom of the bee package....they were indeed BUSY BEES...

they were already preparing cells for the Queen to lay her eggs in.....so Cool!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

this is our first experience with BEES....we learned everything from books, the Internet

and the kind folks at both of the Bee Companies.....here is our disclaimer....you ask 10 people how

to do something and we got 10 different answers....so....we will post the way we decided

to do everything...the ups and downs of our adventure with BEEKEEPING !!! 

BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!

Pleasant Dreams!!!