Honey Bees Come Home

The honey bees have arrived! If you may recall, last year we bought our hive and set-up from Bee Thinking in Portland (now Bee Built). You can revisit that post here.

We had the structure, now all we needed were occupants (and a healthy dose of chutzpah). Seems you just can't go down to a bee store and buy bees, darn it. We missed our window to purchase them last year (they do sell out!), and we wanted to get them locally, which is recommended. So we waited nearly a year until last week when Facilities Manager picked up our bee "package" at Ruhl Bee Supply in Wilsonville, Oregon, about an hour south of us. I now hand it over to FM.

 FM here: Now THAT is a fashion statement! I am sure I have never looked less sexy. Haha. But the outfit served its purpose, i.e., no stings. Well, that is nice to say, but the cool weekend kept the bees quiet and slow. And, besides, they just wanted to move into their new home.

This is a bee package. It is about three pounds of bees (about 10,000 bees, or so I am told) and there is a queen in there along with a pint of syrup on which the bees feed as they travel from place to place. Our bee package came from Northern California. The queen is an Italian queen. Not sure exactly what that means, but it was recommended, so that's the way I went.

History Lesson: I've always wanted bees. My father loved them, though, according to my mother, Assistant Facilities Manager, who has appeared in this blog, Dad never got around to establishing a hive. Bees loved him and would land and walk around on his bare skin. Bumblebees, too. When I found a bee crawling on my cheek at the bee store last week I thought of Dad and carefully wiped it away. Whew!

Oh, yes, I went all out. Jacket, mesh hat and heavy gloves. I am sure I will appreciate each item as I move along the road to being a top-notch beekeeper, but it seems kind of excessive to me. By the way, those pants are Lee jeans that are a whisper away from dissolving in the wind. A bee could fly right through the cloth, if it so desired. No protection there.

This is a pollen patty. Once you have the bees in the hive you place this on top of the frames in the top box. You can see that below to the left. It provides the bees with some pollen. It made me think of those candy bars "Bit O Honey." For the record, I did not take a bite.

The top of the package box. That's the can of syrup inserted into the package. My little knife and mini-marshmallow are at the ready. I know, seems strange, but one must have the mini-marshmallow on hand.

Removing the syrup. Please note the silver tang of metal on the left there. That is the tab used to remove the queen's cage from the package. You just slide the cage along the slot there and pull it out the opening. I really had to tug to get the cage from the package; the worker bees were holding on!

I wipe away -- ever so gently -- the bees from the queen's cage.

Okay, so I have the queen's cage out. Some of those boys love their queen!

There she is! My little Italian queen bee! I am wondering what to name her. "Sofia" sounds good. You might note the red dot on her back. That is the marking for a queen bred in 2018.

Please note the mini-marshmallow in the entry hole of the queen's cage. I removed a cork plug and inserted the 'mallow. After I place it inside the new hive the bees eat away the marshmallow and release the queen. Then they all get to know one another.

Meantime, while I am handling the queen, the working bees are wondering, "Hey, where's Mama?" And, yet, they were very friendly and calm. Gotta love that!

The bees did not like me dumping them from the package into the hive. But that is how you do it. I am glad I had on the mesh-screened hat. Bees landed near my ear (on the mesh) and kind of spooked me, but all was well. I shook and dumped, shook and dumped.

Looks much scarier than it is.

Okay, so the queen is in place, the mass of bees is in the hive, and it is time to close up shop, so to speak. The bees needed to embrace their queen and start making honeycomb. Making their hive a home, I guess. Two days later I inserted all of the frames I removed for the initial loading. Now, the top is in place an the bees are buzzing around inside. I have to wait a few more days to check on them, and give them another pollen patty.

I am using this feeder at the hive entrance to feed them for an undetermined time. It contains a liquid of two cups sugar to one cup water. Makes my teeth hurt just making it. They love it through, and until the nearby clover field starts to bloom they will have home-brewed syrup from FM.

Honeybees are special. We all know the issue with bee die-offs, so Tamara and I want to do our part in helping the environment and giving our little pollinators a safe home. Oh, please know that by the end of the weekend I was wearing simply rubber gloves around the bees. They do not seem interested in me, and that mesh-hat and jacket do not flatter my figure in the least.

So here's to great success with Queen Sofia and her Buzzy Bunch! That's it from Chickadee Gardens this week. Please remember to give those bees some love and please have a great time gardening.

PS: Ah, I got stung. While clearing bees from the package one fell into my shoe. I did not know this until five hours later when I slid my socked foot into the shoe. OUCH! Also, on that warm Monday afternoon, a couple of bees chased me away from the hive. Lesson learned: Bee sting!