We installed 7 packages of bees yesterday morning. It was our first time to install packages, everything went well and we were pretty proud of ourselves.
When we were done we stood back watching the cleansing flights getting pooped on in the process. We noticed this one hive seem to have l-o-t-s more bees than the rest but we didn't really know why.
This morning we noticed there was 4 hives with almost no activity so we decided we better open them up to see why. There was almost no bees in them! Only a few bees clustered around the queen! The rest of them went to the hive that had lots of bees yesterday! There was 2 packages where the bees pretty much stayed with the hive we put them in.
This is what we figured happened; we think the bees from these 5 packages must have come from the same hive and the queen from the original hive was in the package where all the bees wanted to go.
This is what we did: From the hive with lots of bees we took 2 full frames of bees and put in each of the 4 hives but we sprayed the hives with HBH first. Then we blocked the entrance.
Here's my question; How long do we need to we leave the entrance closed for them to accept the queens? The queens are still in their cages.
When we were done we stood back watching the cleansing flights getting pooped on in the process. We noticed this one hive seem to have l-o-t-s more bees than the rest but we didn't really know why.
This morning we noticed there was 4 hives with almost no activity so we decided we better open them up to see why. There was almost no bees in them! Only a few bees clustered around the queen! The rest of them went to the hive that had lots of bees yesterday! There was 2 packages where the bees pretty much stayed with the hive we put them in.
This is what we figured happened; we think the bees from these 5 packages must have come from the same hive and the queen from the original hive was in the package where all the bees wanted to go.
This is what we did: From the hive with lots of bees we took 2 full frames of bees and put in each of the 4 hives but we sprayed the hives with HBH first. Then we blocked the entrance.
Here's my question; How long do we need to we leave the entrance closed for them to accept the queens? The queens are still in their cages.