Bee Diary: New Hive

Sun 27 May 2018

BeeI’ve been toying with the idea of getting bees for a while but with all the moving about I’ve not considered it to be something that was feasible. Well, now that we’ve put down roots I felt that it was the right time to dive in. Thanks to a generous gift from my friend Bill, I only needed to obtain the occupants to make my hive come alive. Josh, from Sol Nectar Farm delivered ~10,000 bees today and we made them a nice home over on the sunny, east side of our property.

It was pandemonium (for the bees) at first; no one knew where they were supposed to be going. Before long, a cloud of bees formed around the hive and me. Josh said that within two hours all the bees would figure out where the queen was (inside the hive) and sure enough before we left they had already started using the front door.

Eric installing bees

We left the lid propped open as some of the bees would have otherwise been trapped up there. We also left them with the remains of the syrup can that they were transported with. Much like that very valuable take-out menu you need when you first move into a new house, this should give them time to move the furniture around and go to the store before growing hungry.

With instruction to revisit them in ~three days, we left them to setup house.

To Do

  1. Remove wedge that is propping lid open.

  2. Add "something heavy" to lid to help stabilize the hive.

  3. Remove syrup can in ~three days.

  4. Inspect brood box in ~three days to make sure:

    • bees are creating wax along the frames, not between the frames

    • eggs are visible

    • everyone is happy

  5. Remove queen box in ~three days

  6. Tilt the hive forward instead of back.

By Sparks, Category: Bees

Tags: Bee Diary /