New bees for 2014

Last Saturday, I spent the morning passing out bee packages for Tim Brod of Highland Honey Bees. We passed out almost 500 packages to buyers of all shapes and sizes. My favorites were the kids who would come with their parents. Some of them were really into it and others were afraid of the bees. One cute little 3 year old girl said she helped paint the hive. When we asked what colors, she of course said pink and purple! I spent the whole morning with no bee suit or veil and didn’t get stung – until I was putting the packages into my truck when one of them got me on the pinky finger. My hand swelled up pretty good, but all in all, it was a fun time.

I got my girls home late afternoon and since I had to be back in Boulder by 6pm, I rushed to get them installed in the hive. This year, I decided to try the install with no extra protection other than a long sleeved shirt. The installation went pretty smoothly except I forgot to get a nail to pop out the cork, so had to run back to get one in the middle of everything.

The new package of bees for 2014.

Here’s a video of pouring the bees in the hive:

On Monday, I peeked in the hive through the window and they had knocked the queen cage down. Fortunately, the screen side was pointing up but I think they had already released her since they were up on the bars and not crowding around the cage.

Today (Wednesday), we went in to retrieve the queen cage and see how they are doing. My 86 year old Dad is in town for my son’s college graduation, so we suited him up and looked in the hives.

Getting my 86 year old dad ready for an inspection

New comb 5 days after the installation.

They have already started building comb on the first 4 to 5 combs. Diana found the queen who is much lighter than the one in the other hive. There were so many bees that we couldn’t really see if she’s laying, but they seem to be doing well.

We also looked in the other hive and they seem to be doing a bit better. There are now 4 combs with brood on them and they started building some new comb on an empty bar that I put in. We did find some queen cells on a couple of the combs which we’ll have to watch. I may get to do a split this year after all!