Guilfordbeekeepers.org

This weekend my son Luke, 8 years old, and I checked to see how our new package of bees was doing. We noticed that there were a lot of brown spots on the hive shortly after installing the package. I thin kit was just cleansing because it tapered off after a day or two.

Anyhow, we are using all 8 frame mediums and Kelly's foundation-less frames. We are sort of experimenting. The bees seem to be doing well. They were working on five frames and the queen is free! We removed the queen cage and buttoned things back up.

We have been using both a baggie feeder and an entrance feeder. Filled the entrance feeder twice but decided to get rid of it and just stick with the baggie. It was about half of what we put in. We will check it and put a new one on either Tuesday or Wednesday.

Luke got a kick out of running the smoker. It is interesting going in to the hive how you get little butterflies about moving stuff around all those little stingers. We didn't have any stings this time! The girls were really pretty good about us reaching in to get the queen cage out.

I left the entrance reducer on the small opening but may open it up some this week when I check on the feeder.

If anyone has any thoughts let me know. We are trying to keep the bees with minimal chemicals or interference from us as possible. We will get our second package May 1!

It's not unusual to see increased bee poop when a package is hived. The bees had not been out for a bathroom break in a few days. If it has lessened, it is following a normal pattern.

It has lessened if not quite entirely. So I think things are well. I put a new baggie feeder on last night and from the little time I was in the hive things seemed active. They had stuck one corner of the baggie down to the frames. But it was no problem to change out otherwise. Lots of pollen-laden bees coming into the hive.