I suppose that’s alright if you will get to work on it later, right?
I suppose! LOL
Turns out I did work on it, but of course I waited until the last minute. I ended up ordering a complete new hive - get this, you can order them pre-assembled! for around the same price as unassembled - so that I wouldn’t panic, thinking I’d forgotten something. Besides, this way I will have extra "supers" (basically additional stories for their house, like the second box I added).
I also waited until the last minute to paint the hive. Something about that didn’t seem right, and sure enough, according to one of the books I have, the bees were likely to be "outraged" at the smell. Great. They were due in one day, and I had probably just royally offended them. The package arrived Monday, much to the joy of our local post office, I’m sure. The bees came in a box, with wire mesh sides:
They had a can of sugar syrup to keep them happy for a while, which was good. It was so cold here, I was worried about putting them in the hive, so they lived in my kitchen for a couple of days. Now THAT was interesting. Did you know they sleep sort of like bats? At least that’s what it looked like to me. They are quiet and still, and because they’re in a swarm, they hang like leaves, or almost like shingles on a roof. Once in a while, one will get fidgety, and a bee next to her will buzz irritatedly at her to settle down. Anyway, it was fascinating.
So on Wednesday afternoon, it was time to "install" the bees in their hive. I’d spent two days listening to them, talking to them, feeding them sugar water, reading the beekeeping forums at beemaster.com (the guy I linked to in an earlier post about smaller cell size posts there!), and watching installation videos on Youtube. That last one was a big help. Watched one more to get my nerve up, fired up the smoker, put on a long-sleeved button-up shirt, hat and veil, and got started.
I opened the package, was overcome by the swarm of Africanized killer bees that came boiling out, and was stung to death.
Okay, okay, it went just fine. I didn’t get stung at all, unless you count the bee I accidentally squished when I was picking up my supplies to go back inside. I felt a slight prick through my glove and found her. :(
All in all, it was a rush! I was ready to do two more when I finished. I could have climbed a mountain, right then! lol
My two youngest kids shouted instructions to me from a distance (they’d watched the videos, too), and my oldest took pictures, probably hoping for something she could send to America’s Funniest Home Videos. Anyway, if I can get that posted on Youtube at some point, I will.
I shook out the bees, but apparently I don't shake very hard; there were still tons of them in the box, so I propped it against the base of the hive. Here's a pic of the rest of the them marching into their new home, and checking out the paint job:
I went back out yesterday to make sure they had released the queen - ooh, I didn’t tell you about the queen. She comes in her own little cage, with a couple of attendants to care for her. In one end of the cage, there is a candy plug. I removed a cork covering it, and placed her cage between two frames in the hive. The bees then ate their way through the candy, and by the time she was released, they had become familiar with her, and accepted her as their queen. At least, that’s what I hope happened. At any rate, when I checked, she had been released.
I refilled their Mason jar of sugar water, moved it to the front entrance and removed the extra box I had used, took out the empty queen cage, and then pulled out a center frame to look for the queen. I didn’t see her (I asked to have her marked when I ordered, she has a yellow dot on her back), but the bees had started to draw a small amount of comb. I hope everything is well, I felt clueless standing there looking at it. Will have to do more reading, and check again in a few days.
Well, that’s it! I hope the pictures aren't too huge. It may not sound like much, but I definitely recommend beekeeping. It’s a strange combination of both an adrenaline rush(I’m going to get stung, I just know I’m about to be stung), and zen-like calm (just staaaaaay calm….you’re not being stung). LOL
1 comment:
On May 12, 2008, iconoclast said:
You either have a very brave or very fast cameraman.
Ha! A little of both, I think. My olderst daughter took most of the pictures. Sometimes she would move up fairly close.
The bees weren't aggressive at all (or most of the photos would have been action shots!).
Later in the day, some of them did some confused wandering. We kept finding them in funny places (and on us!), just sitting, so we would take them back to the hive. The next morning they were able to figure things out as they did their orientation flights in front of the hive.
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