The plan was to meet Debbie and Andy in the Wal-Mart parking lot in north Carson to pick up our two orders of bees. When their email came, they said the bees were packaged on Thursday instead of Friday, so they should be placed in the hives this evening, which is now. We started at 6 pm and finished shortly after 7, we're exhausted. We had everything in place, hive tool, sugar syrup, mister to spray the bees with sugar water, marshmallows to replace the cork in the queen's box and, most significantly, white, spanking new bee suits, bonnets and gloves. Bill decided to go first and in the process of uncorking his queen, managed to
shove the cork into the box. He went into the house to remove the wire mesh on the little box so he could remove the cork piece. As I came into the house he announced, "She flew away!" I was stunned....how could this happen? Meanwhile, Bill located her on the front window and I went out to the shed and got a little aquarium net to catch her. With a little teamwork, we got her back in her box and Bill stapled the wire in place, shoving the marshmallow in the end. Then he placed her between frames, shook bees on top of her and commenced to shake, shake shake his box of bees, trying to empty all of them in the hive body. He ended up leaving the box at the entrance in hopes the remaining bees would figure out that this was their new home.
Then it was my turn. Believe me, I learned from Bill and managed to remove the cork and replace it with the marshmallow with relative ease. I decided, rather than shake out all the bees, to only shake a cup, or so, on the queen and place the bee package in the hive to let them come out on their own. This means I only have five frames in my hive and will replace the remaining five tomorrow when I check on the sugar water. So the adventure begins and we are bee-coming accidental beekeepers.
The plan was to meet Debbie and Andy in the Wal-Mart parking lot in north Carson to pick up our two orders of bees. When their email came, they said the bees were packaged on Thursday instead of Friday, so they should be placed in the hives this evening, which is now. We started at 6 pm and finished shortly after 7, we're exhausted. We had everything in place, hive tool, sugar syrup, mister to spray the bees with sugar water, marshmallows to replace the cork in the queen's box and, most significantly, white, spanking new bee suits, bonnets and gloves. Bill decided to go first and in the process of uncorking his queen, managed to 
shove the cork into the box. He went into the house to remove the wire mesh on the little box so he could remove the cork piece. As I came into the house he announced, "She flew away!" I was stunned....how could this happen? Meanwhile, Bill located her on the front window and I went out to the shed and got a little aquarium net to catch her. With a little teamwork, we got her back in her box and Bill stapled the wire in place, shoving the marshmallow in the end. Then he placed her between frames, shook bees on top of her and commenced to shake, shake shake his box of bees, trying to empty all of them in the hive body. He ended up leaving the box at the entrance in hopes the remaining bees would figure out that this was their new home.
1 comment:
Your story had my kids spellbound.
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