Yesterday I went out to the hives to check the progress of the honeybees in regards to releasing their queens. The first two hives did a bang up job. They were even able to pull the queen cages to the front entrance for easy extraction. How they did this, I do not know, since I had the cages wedged between two frames in the traditional manner.
The last cage however the beekeeper forgot to drill a small hole through the sugar candy to make it easier on the workers. As a result she was still sitting inside her bower staring glumly out of the cage while the attendants assured her they were working on the problem. I took the small cage out and pulled off the screen gently and let her out into the frames. For a brief second I worried she may just fly off with a “Smell You Later!”, taking her colony with her but luckily she decided her new home was good enough.
This year I decided to use the frame division feeders. You simply replace one of the normal frames with a frame shaped container which holds about 1 gallon of sugar syrup. Two hives had sucked it down like a fat kid on a 7-eleven slurpy. The other one had imbibed about half of the sugar syrup. Fortunately, my new beekeeping friend brought some sugar water with him and let me use his to refill my containers.
The bees had started drawing out comb in good order. I saw some eggs in the two hives with the freed queens and pollen was also seen in some of the cells. I also centered the cluster as they had begun drawing out comb close to the hives wall. Other than that everything looks pretty good. I will go out again on Friday or Saturday to feed them more.
Jesse
It has been over a month since I have posted last. The main reason is that I am starting a new business selling Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Gi’s (KillerBeeGi.Com) and have been devoting most of my time to creating an efficient process for a smooth running business. The other reason is that I sometimes get lazy about writing but now that the honeybees are here I feel rejuvenated about writing something new instead of rehashing old beekeeping anecdotes from the past.
Of note, I have joined up with a new beekeeper who became hooked on it while serving in Afghanistan in the military. A fellow soldier talked with him about beekeeping and put the bug in his mind to start his own colonies. Now that he is back in the states he has set up two hives next to mine and I will try to teach him what my teacher taught me. Hopefully I will be up to the task.
As I said before I ordered my bees through BeeWeaver in Texas as they do not use ANY treatments in their apiary. This is the philosophy I will employ, maybe to the bees detriment, as my new outlook on beekeeping. Either my bees will thrive on their own or my wallet will laugh at me next year when I have to order three new packages.
The delivery of the bees did not have the perfect timing of a Swiss watch but they got here none-the-less. The bees were shipped out from Texas on Wednesday using a rented Ryder van with only one driver. Imagine shipping a time sensitive delivery across the vertical axis of the United States in a 48 hour time span with one driver, 55 cups of coffee, and probably 4 packets of No-Doze. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me but somehow they were able to eventually pull it off. My suggestion for BeeWeaver is for them to have a team of drivers like the Tractor Trailer folks use on long hauls. When the bees arrived they were in great condition. Only a few dead bees were on the bottom of the cage and they seemed to thrum excitedly to be let out.
The Bene Gesserit Pain Box
I drove home and then prepared to install them later that day. At four o’clock P.M. I drove out to the property and first mowed the lawn in front of the apiary so the bees would have a clear path of travel and the sea of ticks would have a harder time sucking the life blood out of me. I quickly deconstructed the first cage and installed the queen cage and honeybees. The second package was more of an issue as I dropped the queen cage into the package while trying to pull out the sugar syrup can. I had to stick my bare hands into the package opening and feel my way through the mass of bees for the queen cage. I am always amazed that honeybees are not prone to stinging when they do not have a colony to defend. My mind knows this but my hand inside the queen package does not. I am not sure if you ever have read Frank Herbert’s, Dune, but there is a section in the book where Paul Atriedes is bein
Time to go home.
g tested by the Bene Gesserit witches with his hand in the “Pain Box”. It was kind of like that but without the Sandworms. I finally found the cage by touch and extracted it like an EOD technician defusing an artillery round. With that done I quickly installed the package.
By package three my new bee friend arrived and he helped with some pictures and installation. We then looked into his two hives to see how they were doing and they appeared to be doing well. Because he purchased the standard Italians I might suggest he later order a different variety of queens as I don’t think Italians are suited for our climate.
With that done we talked for a while about bees, politics, economics and enjoyed the scenery. Following a cursory tick check we then headed on home.
So far so good.
Another day milking the bees.
