Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Well... I tend to do things in a grand fashion so I expected no less from my first time installing packages into my new hives. Rob, Peter, and I went down to Triad Bee to pick up four packages. Two for me, one for Peter, and one for one of the club dead outs at the Guilford County extension. They had a great set up and I could tell they had done this a time or two:) You didn't even have to get out of your car! It was race from the start to beat the rain. I got it done but the bees weren't too happy about getting a little rain on them as I did get caught in some rain right when I was completing the first install. I did get stung on the hand but it wasn't bad. At first, I worried about on of my colonies as they seemed to want to get out and collect right at the entrance. It was about a golf ball size amount of bees. With on the post last week, I was thinking that maybe there was another queen around, so I checked and did see anything. So I left and let them do their thing. Now I worry about if they are ok. With yesterdays' weather and low temps last night, I worry that they may have been too chilled. I did get a chance to check in on the yesterday afternoon and one hive was flying and the other and a few bees coming in and out. Funny how you can see the difference between the both of them already. I hope to drop by again today to check in.

I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with the great weather we are going to have this week.

Both hives look normal on the fronts. It is fine to watch the front of the hives or do a quick pop of the top to see if you need to add sugar water to the feeder, but I would not go in beyond that. The closer to 7 days you can go before checking to see if the queen has been released the better, but I would not want to disturb the interior of the hive any earlier than 4 days after installing the package unless there was some urgent necessity.