Bees!

I have been anxiously awaiting the time to go pick up my bees since I ordered them in mid-March! The 10th of May finally arrived and I drove just over two hours to Luray, SC where the Coosawhatchie Honey Farm is located to pick up my 5 frame Nuc of bees.

Anthony, the proprietor of the honey farm met me and talked me through the bee installation and gave me three points to remember. He said if I could master these three things I will be a successful bee keeper.

1. Never let the bees have more comb than they need because if they're not using it, something else, such as hive beetles and other bad things, will.

2. Learn what the queen's eggs look like. Eggs are only eggs for about three days before they hatch into lavae so if eggs are in the hive, the queen was active at least three days ago.

3. I forget.

I guess I have a 66% chance of being a successful bee keeper. It's been 5 whole days and they're still alive - so far, so good!

Pulling the frames out of the nuc and installing in the hive

A healthy brood comb

I must admit that I was a little worried about installing the bees but it was really no problem. I put on my bee suit and started adding frames. Anthony told me that I should put the brood comb on the wall sides of the box and then alternate between filled frames and new foundation. Once the frames were installed I opened the queen and put her in the box to do her thing.

The queen and her attendants

For a while I was afraid that I was not going to get everyone in the hive. There were hundreds of bees who did not want to leave their nuc and every time I tried to shake them into the hive they would fly around and land on the nuc again. Finally I got smart and took the nuc box down to the house. Once it was gone, everybody started to get the right idea.

Every time I shook them out of the box they would swarm and land in the box again.

The final piece of advice Anthony gave me was to feed them a mix of two gallons water and 20 pounds of sugar until it is all gone. Once it is gone, then it would be time to install the next deep super.

They finally started getting the idea.

There is a lot of science, trial and error to this bee thing and the stakes are high. Not only are the bees dependent on me getting right, but they have required a substantial up-front cost for the hive, equipment and bees. Failure would be costly.

I guess I better figure out what that one thing I forgot is.