So, my honey bees had a bit of a journey before they finally made it to their new hive in my backyard. Their lives started at an apiary in Jesup, Ga. On a Friday in late April 2013, Tim Dover visited the apiary and loaded his horse trailer to the brim with packages of honey bees and hauled them to his shop, The Carolina Honey Bee Co. in Travelers Rest, SC. And, on the following overcast Saturday, I picked up my three-pound package of Italian honey bees, complete with a fertile, marked queen, and drove them to Columbia, SC.
Gearing up.
As advised, I waited until late afternoon to put these girls in their new home. Though a novice, I was surprisingly fearless about handling the bees and "installing" them into their new eight-frame condo in my backyard.
Yes, yes, yes. It was the protective gear that made me brave....A white head- to-toe jumpsuit that looked like something you'd see on a sci-fi show or at a hazmat scene. The get-up even included a helmet and netted veil and sheepskin gloves from fingertip to elbow, both arms. Not a real fashion statement, but not vulnerable to an attack from possible mean girls. (You do know the hive is made up of the queen and mostly female worker bees. They allow a few drones to hang around for the purpose of fertelizing the queen. But not many!)
Law and order.
I followed the written instructions that came with the colony to the letter, and remembered a few tips from the earlier beekeeping workshop -- all of which made moving these ten thousand to twelve thousand girls into their house less daunting than when we moved our daughter into her College of Charleston dorm. Had the sugar water ready (one gallon of water to five pounds of sugar), so I spritzed the wire siding of the bee package on both sides. Apparently, this is to calm the bees. Seemed to work.
I removed the queen from the package, taking care to replace the thin ply-wood lid so that the worker bees didn't escape. The queen comes in a container a little longer than a match box, with a cork in one end, along with a block of sugar. Once I got the queen's box attached to a center frame in the hive using a thumb tack, then it was time for the "big move," getting those thousands of honey bees from their travel package into the hive. Tapped the rectangular box on the ground a couple times to shift the bees down, then held them over the open hive and shook and shook and shook until 85 percent of them were out of the package and in the hive. It felt like 10 percent of them were swirling around me, but like I said, I was all-geared up and fearless. No stings!
What happened next happened gradually, but quickly -- if that makes sense. I laid the opened package, now with about 15 percent of my precious honey bee stock still in it, up against the cinder block base on which the hive sits.
And I left it there. Five minutes later, some of the bees in the package had found their way out and into the hive. Ten minutes later, even more. Within an hour, the entire container that the bees came in was empty. Completely empty. And, the bees were buzzing in and around the hive. It looked like they were getting organized.
All that activity was/is apparenty being controlled by the queen and her magic, all-powerful pheremones.
Now what?
If this project goes to plan, the worker bees will eat the queen out of her match-box-sized, temporary home within three days (remember the sugar cube I mentioned), and the queen will start laying fertile eggs in the wax cells the worker bees should this very moment be "drawing out." (They are feeding on sugar water I put in the top feeder while they figure out where to go to forage for the real stuff.)
Fingers Crossed!
I will know for certain in three days, when I suit-up again, open the hive and check to see if these busy bees are sticking to the plan.
I'll keep you posted.
