16 May 2010
Installing the bees
This is what a package of 3 lbs of bees looks like:
We brought everything up to the roof of the shul with the assistance of Anderson, who lives there and takes care of the property. He kindly agreed to take some photos of us after we got into our jackets and veils, and offered to keep the poultry waterer filled for the bees.
So there we were up on the roof, we three ladies of beekeeping.
We all wore jackets/veils, but we went barehanded. No gloves for us! The theory is that going gloveless gives you greater dexterity, which means you're less likely to accidentally squish bees, which means they're less likely to want to sting you in the first place.
We had BEEKEEPER HUGS! up there in the Brooklyn sky.
Next, you can see the basic set-up. We had a single medium super hive ready, up on a pair of cinderblocks. The white and red thing in the upper left of the next photo is the poultry waterer, so they don't bother neighbors when they get thirsty. To the right, the brown thing is the hive-top feeder for sugar syrup before they can gather their own nectar, and in front of that is a cardboard nuc box, then holding the package of bees.
As we set it up, we used the spritz bottle seen below to spray sugar syrup on all the frames that went inside the hive, so that when we dumped the bees in they'd be happy and inclined to stay put. In the process, we spilled sugar syrup all over our hands. Ack! We rinsed it off with the hose, but still.
We had a really hard time keeping the smoker lit. I've used a bee smoker before, but never lit one on my own, and it takes some getting used to. I got the hang of it by the second time I visited the hive, at least.
Here, you can see me standing next to the package, about to open it up. I got white hightop sneakers to keep at the shul, and I pulled my socks up over my jeans so bees couldn't climb up into my pants. The red strap under the hive is a ratchet strap to hold the hive together in the wind.
Photography paused during the actual hive installation, unfortunately.
We set up the hive with only 8 of the 10 frames in it. We sprayed the sides of the bee package (lightly and gently!) with sugar syrup to keep everyone happy, then smoked it a bit as well to cut their lines of communication. The smoking was probably unnecessary, but I made a point of going very gently with cool smoke, at least. More importantly, I smoked the munchkin's knee where she'd been stung earlier, in case there was any alarm pheromone left there.
To get the bees out, we used pliers to pull off the side and bottom bits of wood from one of the sides, then held the mesh up and literally shook the bees into the space left by the missing 2 frames. It took some gentle shaking and whacking, but ultimately most of them fell in. And then there were bees in the sky and bees on the ground, bees licking spilled sugar syrup off the rooftop and bees licking spilled sugar syrup off our hands.
We pulled the can of sugar syrup out of the package box so we could get at the queen. We held her tiny cage in our bare hands and shook the bees off of it. (Literally. Thwip, bees flying through the air!) I showed the queen and her long queenly butt to the fascinated child. Her cage did not come with a nail attached by a string, alas, so I used a staple from the wood we'd ripped off the box to pry the cork out of her cage, leaving only a piece of soft candy blocking her exit.
I slipped the queen cage into the hive, held by pressure between two frames, and carefully added in the last 2 frames.
We put the feeder on top, and filled it up with sugar syrup. Matchsticks in the feeder and the waterer so the bees won't drown.
I fit an entrance reducer into the hive entrance to help encourage the bees to hang out and nothing else to go in while the colony is still weak, and closed it up with the ratchet strap. Doused the smoker, cleaned everything up.
There were still a bunch of bees hanging out in the package, so I just set it near the entrance of the hive. This is normal, I'm told, and they found their way in eventually. Luckily, the chilly night air didn't even kill most of them first.
At some point my friend's phone rang, and she picked up and said: "Can I call you back later? Right now I'm covered in bees!"
I'm going to order some extra hive tools, because we really kept passing mine back and forth. And we might experiment with different veils when we order a few more for guests.
Ultimately, I wasn't stung at all, and I really calmed down about the amazing sensation of bees gently meandering along my bare skin. My friend was stung three times - once on her hand, while shaking the package, and twice through her thin sweatpants, when she crouched and squished the bees that had landed there. She didn't seem to mind at all.
We were giddy with triumph. This was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life, in a way that I can't do justice to here. We installed those bees so damn hard. We installed the hell outta them! There were ten thousand and THREE victorious ladies up there on that rooftop!
I initially wanted a nuc, because it'd mean a greater chance of actually getting honey this year, but now I'm really glad that I got a package. What fun to really ride this ride on our own from the very start!