Installing 3# Package of Honey Bees in Top Bar Hive 5.10.11

This is what a 3# package of Honey Bees looks like when they send it through the mail. It came to the Post Office.

You can see several dead bees piled up in the corner. The box had been sitting in one of the Post Office baskets …and sitting at an angle so they all fell to that corner.

You can’t see it but there is a can of syrup in the center of the bees. They are clustered around the Queen’s Cage and the can.

Once we remove the panel at the top, I can remove the syrup can and the Queen Cage. She will be left in the cage for a couple of days. There is a candy plug in the bottom and the bees will chew through it and release her. She was not their Queen when installed in this package. This gives them time to accept her and not kill her.

I’ll hang her cage in the hive and dump the bees in with her.  All the bees are hanging in a bunch together and by giving the cage a quick knock they will come loose from the sides of the cage and I can easily dump them into the hive.

I have the camera set up  too far away to really see what is going on. I’ll try to remember that the next time I work on the hive. But.. the grandkids will get a kick out of seeing Grandma and Grandpa in their “bee suits”.

Installing Honey Bees in a Top Bar Hive

Our Cabbage Palms are getting ready to bloom and the Bottlebrush bushes have been blooming for a week or so. I’ve been watching them bring in pollen.  It’s amazing how much they can carry.

So far, the bees don’t seem to mind me sitting in my chair watching their coming and going. If one gets too interested in me…..I just get up and leave for awhile.