Hail Hail The Girls Are Here! : 2014-05-11

Let the 2014 beekeeping season begin!  Nothing like installing new packages of bees to remove a bit of the frustration from loosing the previous hives.  The new bees should have an even better start since I'm now able to use honey and drawn comb from the old hives.  No need to feed sugar this time!

Packages of bees waiting for their new home

Green and White hive were set up to make their encore performances.  I made a slight change this year and oriented them so they both face the same direction next to each other.

Ready to install

White hive is fitted with my fully drawn plastic Honey Supercell Frames.  Green Hive is starting with a number of drawn foundationless frames and a few that are empty foundationless frames.  My first year installing packages I sprayed them down with sugar water to keep the bees occupied with eating the sugar and it also serves to help clump them together.  This year with a little more experience under my belt and also from reading more from Michael Bush  http://www.bushfarms.com/beespackages.htm I decided not to do this and as my friend Scott says.......Release the Kraken!!  I removed the feeding can and the queen cage and after removing a few frames from the hive, I slammed the box on the ground and dumped the bees right in there!  I replaced the frames, removed the cork from the queen cages and wedged the queen cages between the frames.  I no time at all I had two newly installed hives.

Packages installed

I'm now praying for a fantastic 2014 season!  In a few days I will go back and make sure the queens have been released from their cages.  If not, I will then release them myself.  Next project after that is to turn one of the hives into my Arduino based smart hive!!  More on that when the time comes.  Until then, thanks for reading!