The Install at Mom's

So now that I've made the trip to Mom's house, it's time to install two of the packages.  The hives are stocked with 10 frames in a "Deep" box.  The box is the longest in the hive so that the queen can fill up all the cells with eggs.  There will be some honey in the bottom box but mostly, brood.  Or we hope LOTS of brood.  The brood is an egg that has progressed or is developing into a bee. 

To help the bees, I've purchased plasticell foundation for them.  Those are man made plastic sheets with perfect little hexagon sized raised starter blocks for the bees.  I guess the "Engineer" bees can take a day off.  This is just to help them get drawing out their comb faster.  The bees will build out the comb with every bit of space between the frames with these wax hexagon shaped cells.  They end up being about a centimeter deep.  I'm always astonished at how good the bees are at building perfect-not near perfect-but perfect cells.

I'm only placing one deep with frames as the bees are inserted into the box.  Bees like to Build up.  So if I were to give them room to travel up, they would .  Forgetting to go left or right and fill the entire box.  So I'll wait to add a second deep box after they have filled this first one.  That will take around 3 weeks or more.




Here they are!  I've dumped them into the hives, but kept my queen safe in her little cage until Sunday.  I want to give the hive plenty of time to sense her and know she is their queen before letting her out.  You'll see some of the bees could not be dumped into the hive.  So I put the package near the hive.  They will follow their hive and move into the hive by nightfall.  Easier for me.



After I've shook as many into the boxes as I could without really upsetting them, or putting them at risk, I placed the package up against the hive to let the remaining bees find their own way home.  They will do this naturally.  You would too.  Who wants to sleep outside when you can take shelter with your family inside!