Over the winter, I took classes to become a bee keeper. Having bees to pollinate our black raspberries is supposed to tremendously help our yield. It was all fine and good until this week. As I walked into the bee supplier’s barn that held hundreds of packages of bees, I froze…I felt sick…I wanted to cry, but I didn’t want this sweet old man to have to call the psych ward at the hospital! It was one thing to take classes and talk about it all, but another thing to see hundreds and thousands of bees and hear the strong, steady buzzing. I got my composure and brought the bees to my car and drove home with them.
A family friend came to help me “install the bees” into their new hive.
This is how the bees come from the supplier. They have a can of sugar-water inside the closed box and a queen in its own special cage inside.First, we took the top off the box, then pulled the can of sugar-water and the queen out. We hung the queen’s cage in the hive where she would eat through a candy plug and crawl out of her cage.
Then it seems crazy, but we just tapped the box hard and shook the bees into the hive.
Then I brushed the bees away from the edge so they wouldn’t get squished as the next layer of the hive is placed on top, the feeder.The feeder was placed on top. The center is open to below, so the bees can come up and drink the sugar-water that is poured into the feeder.We put the covers on the hives and then put a heavy rock so skunks or raccoons won’t get in. The bees have a place on the bottom of the hive to enter and exit.The next day, they looked great and were coming and going getting to know their new neighborhood.
Raising honey bees has been an amazing thing to learn about, and the bees are fun to watch while they work. The bees we got are really calm and have been nice to me so far! Stay tuned for more posts about my new hobby!
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