18 May, 2011

Setting the Bees! Top Bar Hive Part 3

 We bought our bees yesterday but we had to wait until this morning to set them....after the rain.  The gentlemen we bought our bees off of also sold us a nice hat at a super good price.
 He also gave us some waxy comb for them to get started with so that the bees would be able to get a jump start on their comb and to make sure that they start the comb the right direction.

 Here is our box of bees!  We had to pry the top off and then we were supposed to take the queen out and the food jar that was in there.  Yeah, things don't always go like they should! LOL!

 Then my fearless 11 yo dumped the bees down into our top bar hive.
 You can see in this picture that the bees have already found the main three holes for the entrance and a bunch of them were swarmed around it.
The Queen is in her own little box.  We had to remove the cork from the bottom of the queen box.  Then she has cork candy that surrounds that.  She has to eat it from one direction and the workers bees eat at that from the other direction to let her out of her little box.  It is supposed to take a day or so for them to get her out so that she is acclimated to the hive and does not take off and take all of the worker bees with her.  She has a little metal piece on the top of her box and we wedged it between the slats.  She is there on the back right opening.     Then we placed the lid back on top.
Right now we are letting the bees settle in and calm down.  We are going to go back out in a couple hours and put a feeder in the bottom of the hive.  We do not want the bees to die from lack of food with all of this rain and cold icky weather.
Search & Win

4 comments:

Steph T said...

That is soooo cool! My kids really enjoyed it. I asked my 10 year old Caleb if he would be willing to do the job your 11 yo did. :) He said "probably. If my whole body was covered." LOL They are braver than I am!!

Christy said...

Wonderful! I love bees!!

* Crystal * said...

Too cool! Do keep us updated on the bees, I'd love to see how it all works out for y'all :-)

Unknown said...

I am not kidding, I think we're mirroring each other!

My mom told me today that both of her hives have produced a swarm! She has managed to contain both and is bringing me a nuc tomorrow!

Congratulations on your bees!!! I'd never seen a top bar hive before!