Jerry Kinder
04-12-2009, 10:22 PM
My two packages of bees came this Friday. One was great, the other 3/4 dead (~3 inches of dead bees in the bottom of the package). This seems odd because they were attached to each other. Called the Bee people and they said it was a post office shipping thing, and the post office says that it’s not their problem as they delivered them, and that there is no guarantee on live delivery. I guess I learned a lesson here somewhere about shipping live things through the postal service. It took them 5 days to go from one end of the state to the other (-100 or so miles on each end). Got lucky on one point, both queens made it.
Well, I went ahead and installed them. Dumped the healthy package per the books and they are doing fine. Not wanting to dump a bunch of dead bees into the hive I asked the bee company what to do and they suggested taking out enough frames to fit in the opened package, move the queen into the middle of the remaining frames and the bees would just walk over to her. I did that, and they did. I took out the box of dead bees 3-4 hours later and released the queen.
This was on Friday. Since then both hives are drinking there sugar water at about the same rate (one large mayonnaise jar per 2 days in an entrance feeder). I checked the bees today, Sunday, and the well populated hive has bees on all 10 frames drawing them out with comb. In the other hive, the bees are only visibly working in one gap with a few bees wandering around here and there.
Now for the question. Should I pull several partially drawn full of busy bees from the fat hive and put them into the other hive in an attempt to balance them out a little? The hives are sitting next to each other (pointing different ways) so they may just walk home if they don’t like it. I would have to make sure that the frames I move don’t have the queen which may/will be a little of a guess on my part being new.
I have not seen either of the queens inside the hives when I checked them but when I was watching them I did notice two or three bees with pollen going into each hive. Somewhere I read that that indicated that the queens are still in there hives.
I guess the other option is to just let the light hive fight its way back. But there are just a few bees in there right now. They are eating, and I have choked the entrance down to ~2 inches. They are on the opposite side of the hive from the opening, next to the feeder.
Anyway, that is my first few days as a beek! I installed them, released the queens, inspected once, no gloves, only put on a long sleeve shirt and veil for the inspection and haven’t been stung yet. I do see a reason for the bee cloths though; the bees seem to just sit all over me and get into my hair. Then when I walk into the house they take off for the window (then my wife takes off after me for letting them in the house). If I had a set of over cloths then I could take them off outside. I guess it may be worth spending a few bucks on a jacket to keep peace in the family. Anyone ever try one of those butterfly sucker guns for bee rescues?
Oh, on the dead bees, should I take this as a lesson learned or make myself a nascence to the USPS and the bee seller?
Well, I went ahead and installed them. Dumped the healthy package per the books and they are doing fine. Not wanting to dump a bunch of dead bees into the hive I asked the bee company what to do and they suggested taking out enough frames to fit in the opened package, move the queen into the middle of the remaining frames and the bees would just walk over to her. I did that, and they did. I took out the box of dead bees 3-4 hours later and released the queen.
This was on Friday. Since then both hives are drinking there sugar water at about the same rate (one large mayonnaise jar per 2 days in an entrance feeder). I checked the bees today, Sunday, and the well populated hive has bees on all 10 frames drawing them out with comb. In the other hive, the bees are only visibly working in one gap with a few bees wandering around here and there.
Now for the question. Should I pull several partially drawn full of busy bees from the fat hive and put them into the other hive in an attempt to balance them out a little? The hives are sitting next to each other (pointing different ways) so they may just walk home if they don’t like it. I would have to make sure that the frames I move don’t have the queen which may/will be a little of a guess on my part being new.
I have not seen either of the queens inside the hives when I checked them but when I was watching them I did notice two or three bees with pollen going into each hive. Somewhere I read that that indicated that the queens are still in there hives.
I guess the other option is to just let the light hive fight its way back. But there are just a few bees in there right now. They are eating, and I have choked the entrance down to ~2 inches. They are on the opposite side of the hive from the opening, next to the feeder.
Anyway, that is my first few days as a beek! I installed them, released the queens, inspected once, no gloves, only put on a long sleeve shirt and veil for the inspection and haven’t been stung yet. I do see a reason for the bee cloths though; the bees seem to just sit all over me and get into my hair. Then when I walk into the house they take off for the window (then my wife takes off after me for letting them in the house). If I had a set of over cloths then I could take them off outside. I guess it may be worth spending a few bucks on a jacket to keep peace in the family. Anyone ever try one of those butterfly sucker guns for bee rescues?
Oh, on the dead bees, should I take this as a lesson learned or make myself a nascence to the USPS and the bee seller?