Bees

My new bees

Well, I finally got my new bee package!
They actually arrived a few weeks ago, but I have just been so very busy! I haven't had a chance to crow about it yet.

I ordered my bees from an apiary out of Navasota, and the great thing about this company is that you go to Austin for your bee pick up. So I went on the 7th, (yes, that would be the day before Easter) to deep east Austin and picked up my new babies.

Removing queen cage

As you can see from the photo you literally get thousands of bees in a cage to take home with you and deal with.

Hey! no problem, they really aren't as scary as they seem, especially since at this point they have no hive to defend.

Do you see the orange strip coming from under the tin can? ( there is syrup in the can for the bees to eat)
Well, attached to the orange strip is the queen in her own cage. And boy do they want to tear her up! She is in this smaller cage seperated from the general
population for her safety, after a few days they will accept her as their new queen.

around 3lbs of bees

So... what you do is carefully remove her cage, and remove the cork at the end, there is candy there! Bees love candy, so they will eat away at it for a few days, then when the candy is gone they will have accepted her, all their anger is gone!

The  rest of the bees need to be removed from their cage and placed in the hive.... so you spray them with.... you guessed it sugar water! to calm them down and just sort of pour them out into the hive.
( my photographer is a bit of a weenie and reused to
take photos while I was dealing with this step)

Any way all is going great! These bees have been very, very active and there is so much blooming right  now.
I can just sit and watch them for hours, they are fascinating!

Any one who is remotely interested should give it a try, even if you fail you will learn so much from the experience, and who knows? You may be a true bee keeper!

We will be offering some Farm Mornings in May which will include a Bee Morning, please come!