Hiving the Package Bees

Over the winter I build a Kenya Top Bar Hive. I became fascinated with the idea of "natural" beekeeping. I followed instructions found at The Barefoot Beekeeper

to build my hive. Most of the wood used in the building of this hive was from wooden pallets discarded at my work. I had ordered a 4lb package of bees with a Minnesota hygienic queen from Knight Family Honey about an hours drive from my house. I had a friend pick them up on Saturday as I was out of town. He dropped them off to me Sunday night and I was so tempted to hive them right then. However, the sun had just gone down and since it was my first time hiving a package, I wanted to take pictures. I decided to wait.

I kept the package overnight in the garage covered with a towel. They did fine. For Monday, I placed them on the back deck where they could get the sun in the afternoon while they waited for me. They were so anxious to get out and get working that they were actually trying to clean up the dead bees from the bottom of the package (though they had no way of carrying them out of the package).

The weather on Monday was perfect. It was still in the upper 70's at about 6:00 pm when I hived them. I had my helper keepers and we were ready to go. There was a slight breeze but not enough to bother the bees.

I had read about spraying them with sugar water but decided against it as I wanted a more dramatic hiving with bees flying around the yard. I had veils on my kids but did not bother wearing one.

The queen did not have the sugar plug that I was expecting so I'll have to get in the hive in a few days and release her. All in all it took about an hour. the queen was hung from the top bars and the box was dumped (as much as possible) directly in the top of the hive. I had only removed 4 of the top bars. Once the bees were dumped in, I replaced the top bars and placed the package on the table in front of the hive. At 7:30, when the sun went down, almost all of the bees had found there way home.

Some photos are posted here on this blog. The rest can be viewed here.

The girls inside the package - it's hard to believe there's 10,000 of them in there.

The queen in her cage.

My helpers in their veils (Tylor and Jaden)

Watching them all fly around.