Conditions: Sunny 65F
Present: Bud F. and I, Annie on the videorecorder
Equipment: 2 plastic hives w/ plastic bottom boards on wooden hive stands, elevated on angle iron and cinderblocks. Bud had the equipment after storing for 12 years and cleaned it up for this season. Each colony got some old comb (2 frames for the Italians, 3 frames for the Russians) and all empty frames were new w/ plastic foundation. We loaded the comb as much as we could with sugar syrup and placed pail feeders on top the inner covers. Each colony got 1 pollen patty. Entrance reducers were used, limiting the entrance to about 4” and half of full height. Got to test my new bee jacket/hood unit, which worked great.
Activities: Picked up bees from T.B. Jeffries at 11am. Installed both queens in cages with candy and all bees at 2:30pm. This went very smoothly. We followed the instructions in “Beekeeping for Dummies” as Bud had never installed packaged bees before.
Observations: The colony with the Italian queen was much more active with many more bees flying and coming and going from the hive entrance. Noticed all the attendants (5 or 6) in the Russian queen cage were dead, but the queen was alive and active. The Russians were much more reserved, which may be due to extra sugar syrup spraying immediately before hiving. Great weather and a great first time handling bees. No stings until I was gathering up equipment and smashed a bee between a bee brush, a hive tool, and my ungloved hand.
