Honey Bee Package Installation Day

Tuesday, April 19 was package bees arrival day. This year the bees I purchased came from California. I wondered if they might beg me to send them back when they realized it was barely in the low 40's here as I dumped them into their respective hives. Often the bees are a little grumpy when installed at such cool temps, but this year all the bees were very calm and it went quite smoothly and uneventfully. I like uneventful when it comes to honey bees and driving. It was nearly a 200 mile round trip to pick up the bees and that was, thankfully, uneventful too. 

Installation is a simple process that seems scary to new beekeepers. The bees sting to defend themselves or defend their home. Packaged bees have not yet adopted a hive as their new home, so they are generally quite docile about being unceremoniously dumped into it. Sometimes in the cool weather some bees will take exception and thank me by stinging or pestering me in a way that makes it clear they are not too happy with me.

Bump the cage so all bees fall to the floor..........

Remove the can of sugar syrup........



 

Remove the queen bee's cage from the package of bees......

Place the queen in her cage into the hive.......

And shake, shake, shake the bees into the hive. Fun!

Check out my YouTube video where I install a package of honey bees. It doesn't all go smoothly on the video but it all worked out.

Bee Happy! Thanks for reading my blog.