They're Here!

Our neighbor keeps bees and suggested we get some hives and get some bees from him. This time of year bees will swarm when their hive gets too full. They make a new queen, kick out the old queen and some of her loyal followers go with her. They are really docile when they are swarming, even though they look scary.
We visited GloryBee in Eugene and stocked up on everything we needed. They were so nice and helpful there - even though we didn't know much. Seriously the best customer service I've experienced in years, I highly recommend them.


Aaron put everything together.


We painted it all. Here is Aaron putting the bottom screen together.



Yesterday I had a 15 hour day at school. It was the second of 4 Tuesdays we are there past ten cleaning migrant worker's teeth. It's exhausting. I got a call from our neighbor that he had some bees for us. We didn't exactly have it all set up. So we got 4 hours of sleep and got up at 5 am to go and seal in the bees and bring them over. We were at Home Depot by 6 am and building the foundation by 7.


Our nuc in the middle.


Aaron carried them home.


He painted honey along the bottom of all the frames to encourage them to stay, give them a food source and distract them from the commotion.



Getting ready for the transfer - neither of us have actually been around a bee hive. We had to just watch a lot of videos to figure it out.


Our first look. They really are pretty mellow if you move slowly and carefully. They got a little agitated by the second frame, but it really wasn't bad.



Disoriented bees.


I am SO disappointed this picture is blurry! I couldn't see what I was shooting through the veil, so I had to just point and guess.


Pouring in the sugar water - their food source until they get up on their feet and there is more nectar available to them.


All done! They buzzed around for about 20 minutes, then calmed down.


We weren't sure how many boxes to put on, so we put two in. Then we found out there should only be one. So we suited up again to take it off, but the top section has a big flat feeder filled with a gallon of sugar water. Some of this dumped all over into the hive when Aaron lifted it. Argh! I think it was okay, but it was just frustrating learning as we went. We also are worried about the queen - we looked for her as we went, but it's hard to find her. The drones are also large, and we are inexperienced. At the very end we saw a large bee that had been smashed - I went to take a picture of her, but she went down into the frames before I could. We have to wait a week to find out if our queen was killed :( Chances are that she didn't and we are being paranoid, but again we are dealing with a learning curve here.

OH - I'm sure some of you are wondering if we got stung. Aaron did get stung once on his palm through his glove because she got pinched. Other than that, no stings!