...welcome home!

The bees were welcomed into their new homes over the weekend. I was a little worried about the cold and dreary weather, but the sun came out and the temperature rose slightly so I went ahead and put the bees into the hives.

Getting started!

First, I sprayed the bees down with sugar water. Because it was so cold outside, I sprayed them pretty lightly. They needed about 4 hours to clean themselves before the temps dropped below 50 degrees.

I removed 2 frames to place the queen and dump the bees into.

Next, I removed the queen cage and placed it between the 2 middle frames. I had arranged the frames with comb from last year. I put 2 frames full of honey in the middle for the bees to eat. On either side of the honey frames, I placed 2 frames of empty comb/pollen for the queen to lay brood. Outside those frames, I placed a frame of honey and on the very outside, I placed half built comb and empty foundation. The bees produce wax after 15 days and need a place to put the wax so there needed to be empty foundation for them to build.

I tried a new technique to hold the queen cage in place.  A push-pin.  It worked great!

The queen is in a cage with several worker bees. There is a small removable cork that leads to a candy that the bees will eat through to release the queen. This serves as a time release for the bees to get acquainted to the queen's pheromones before she is released into the hive.

After placing the queen, I dumped the worker bees from their shipping container into the hive. I quickly covered them.

At this point, it is still too cold to feed the bees sugar water. They will feed off of the honey in the existing comb until it is warmer. In a couple days, I will go into the hive to ensure that the queen has been released and has started to lay eggs.

So happy to be home!

...brrrrrr, bees!

The bees are in, and it is freezing and rainy. Rachel and I have taken to google to figure out when we should install the bees. We will keep you all posted, but in the meantime, here are some pictures of the bee pick-up.

P.S. Get excited for the big reveal...the new Queens' names!

40,000 bees in the back seat with Kliness

Have you ever kept 20,000 bees in your kitchen?

Great photo of a bee cluster.  The bees are clustered around the queen's cage.  They do this to stay warm.

...here we go again!

You may have noticed that my posts dropped off last October. I am ready to tell the world the sad truth....I killed my bees. Unknowingly, of course, and indirectly, but nevertheless, dead.

I checked in on the hive the Saturday after Thanksgiving; they were alive. It was a beautifully warm day so we checked in on Rachel's too. They were also alive, and they were in a perfect bee cluster. Bees stay in a cluster in the winter that resembles a ball of bees. They do this to stay warm by sharing body heat.

Two weeks later, we had another warm day, and I decided to go knock on the hive to see if I heard buzzing bees inside. Tap tap. No buzz. Tap tap. No buzz. So I suited up and went in the hive....not a bee in sight. No dead bees and not a single live bee. They were gone. Flew the coop. So inadvertently, I must have done something to cause the bees to leave. Chances are they had varroa mites causing them to sense inevitable disaster and collapse of their colony. They had no choice but to leave and build a new home. It was so late in the fall that I doubt they were able to build a new hive with enough honey supplies to last through winter.

Two weeks later, Rachel's bees met the same fate. She went to look in on them. They were still in their bee cluster, but they were all dead. She shifted through the bees, and she wasn't able to find the queen.

Needless to say, we are starting over. We are going with two hives each this year to better our chances of survival. The bees will be delivered at the end of March. We needed new woodware in order to house 2 colonies of bees. Yesterday, we finished painting and priming all of our hives. Here are some photos. I look forward to sharing round 2 with you all.

R.I.P Priscilla and Gwenevere