The bees arrived yesterday morning by the United Parcel Service. I was very excited! I have been waiting on them for about 3 weeks. I order these package bees from B. Weaver Apiaries. This is what they looked like when they
arrived.
There are some dead bees at the bottom, but it is a normal amount of loss in transit.
When I got the bees home I placed them on a table on my patio in the shade. I knew I would not be able to put the bees in their hive immediately, so I made up sugar water the night before. The sugar water is 50% water and 50% sugar. I put the sugar water in a clean spray bottle. I sprayed the outside of their shipping package with a good dousing of sugar water.
After I got home from work that same afternoon I quickly changed into my bee protective suit. I put sugar water into their feeder. I made sure that the entrance reducer at the front of my bee hive was at the smallest opening.
I used the hive tool to pry the feed can out of the shipping package and removed the queen cage. I checked to make sure she was still alive. I removed the cork from the candy end of the queen cage and hung the cage with the candy end down 2 center frames of the bee hive.
I removed about half of the frames. I set the package of bees in the hive where I had removed the frames. I put the feed can back in the shipping box and cut a hole in the screen of the shipping box so that the bees could get out of the shipping box. Then the bees began to crawl out and I covered the hive. I will do my next bee inspection of the hive in 24 hours.
Here is a video that shows how to hive bees. They do it a little different than I did. Click on the link below and choose the video titled Your First Bees.
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