I suspect most readers recently have or are about to install packages of honeybees. I installed a couple dozen last week, and have eight more coming this week. Once you catch “bee disease,” like chocolate and money, you can never have enough!
Here’s a couple more things to “bear in mind” during these first few weeks:
Make sure you check that the queen is alive! If so, remove the cork. (We use a screw to turn in to the cork a bit, and then pull it out.) We then use that screw to start a tunnel for the worker bees to get to the queen a bit faster. (See top left image)
“Hanging” the queen cage: You don’t want her to be trapped the other side of some dead worker bees. We position the queen cage lengthwise between bars, with the candy side pointing down. Should a bee die between the queen and the candy door, at least gravity won’t keep her there. (See top right image)
Queen release: A few days after installation, I remove the shipping box from the hive. (I install by setting the box into the hive, not by shaking in the bees.) When I remove the box (and put in the rest of the frames), I also release the queen if she’s still in the cage. In about 50% of mine, the queen was already out.
- IMPORTANT: If she isn’t yet out, hold that cage really close to the bars so she can scamper out of the cage and dive into the inviting frames. One year my brainiac son held the cage at his 6’5” face level to pry open the wire mesh. She crawled out, stretched her wings, and flew away. Argh. A queenless hive is not good.
- One of my mentees who didn’t listen to me (!!) has already experienced that this year. He luckily had a second hive so he could combine those bees until he gets a new queen. (Email if that happens to you, we can discuss options.)
Slow and steady: Never pull a frame out faster than a bee can walk, unless you’re sure the queen isn’t on it. You don’t want to harm/squish/roll this most critical bee.
Entrance reduction: You’ll want to reduce the entrance to as small as possible so they can defend it. We also stuff in a bit of grass to keep them in there the first several hours. The grass will wilt by the next day, allowing them to get out, but by then, hopefully the queen’s scent will have permeated the hive and helped reinforce that this is their home. (Stay bees, stay!)
Honeycomb: You may find some beautiful white comb built in the shipping box, or around the queen cage when it is in the hive. That’s great—it shows your bees are anxious to get going and ready to give the queen a place to lay.
Feed!! I feed sugar syrup (and frames of honey from last year) until the bees are no longer taking it. With all the rain, they’re sucking it down pretty fast as they can’t get out much. But they’re building beautiful comb while they’re hanging out in there.
Your bee log: Please please track key bee events. Bee-lieve me, you’ll want to know down the road things like when you put in the bees, the lineage of the queen, how long it took them to draw out comb, problems, etc. I’ll discuss this more in the months ahead, but start documenting now. My bee log is a Word file on my PC. Notes on two of our hives are below, as an example. We name our hives, but not by location, because over time they might get moved and combined with others so ‘Left Front Hive’ doesn’t work.)
Steelers, 2014 unmarked Italian queen: (this is my grey and gold hive)
- 4/24: Installed
- 4/26: Released queen added remaining frames, bees incredibly calm. Only consumed a pint of syrup since install.
Island Girl, 2013 unmarked Carnolian queen: (this hive is in an area that sometimes floods in the spring. I’ve had to put on Paddington Bear boots to visit it. I’ve included some of the log on this hive from last year to show you the events I track.)
- 5/26: Started nuc with a marked Carni queen
- 6/14: Wow—building up fast. Moved to a 10-frame box.
- 7/3: Added second deep. Saw deformed wing virus, added drone comb.
- 7/17: Checked drone comb—have built out, it has eggs. Check/pull in two weeks.
(lots of other stuff about adding honey supers, removing drone comb, pulling honey/production until I wrapped this hive for the winter in October)
- 3/15: Knocked on side of hive, they roared!!
- End of March: Peeked under top cover, they haven’t yet eaten to the top.
- 4/4: Added syrup feeder just in case.
- 4/27: Finally warm enough to open. Found unmarked queen, so they must’ve raised a new one last fall. She has several frames of brood and eggs. Reduced hive to just a deep box, and the honey super that she’s laying in.
Kokomo, 2014 unmarked Italian queen: (next to Island Girl; decided to name all the hives in that apiary after Beach Boys songs)
- 4/24: Installed
- 4/26: Released queen added remaining frames, seemingly more bees than other new packages of same date, and they were extremely animated. Perhaps stray bees or some from Island Girl joined ‘em? They’ve consumed two quarts of syrup in two days.