Our UPS driver made us his first stop today. Apparently, he is allergic to bees. His second stop was someone fairly close with another package of bees before starting his normal route.
Up to this point, we have always purchased a nuc. Why? There's more bees and the queen is already established. A package of bees can be a little more difficult.
Did you see me talk about the Saskatraz bee project? Well, that's what delivered today...
Installation
This wasn't what I expected. I read the instructions multiple times before today. I also stood in the apiary surrounded with everything I needed and reread it. The actual instructions just don't truly line up with what I had. So I struggled a bit with package #1 and then knew exactly what I needed to do for #2.
Mann Lake provides a really nice two page document on install.
What was it I missed? First, look at what the box looks like. There were no frames with it. Maybe because it was different bees? It was just a plastic box with nothing else inside (well, the bees were).
OK - so remove the feed. Easy, twist the greenish thing under the plastic cover. You need some muscle to slide the plastic cover off.
Then where was the queen box? We shook it out into the frame body in the hopes of being able to see down inside. Still didn't see it.
Turns out, it is under tape and not easily seen. We took the tape off the top and found a little bit of metal that seemed out of place under that bright pink sticker in the photo. If you unfold it, it was obvious you just slide it towards the hole opening and the queen cage comes out.
From there, it was easy. We shook them all down in. I modified what I thought should be done. You can see what I did in the picture below. The photo was my amazement that I had already set the queen down but they continued to hang out on my arm and hand (no stings!). Anyway, we released the queen into the hive (that is up to you if you release her immediately); then, we put the inner cover on. We were already prepared to give them buckets of 1:1 sugar water. So the extra hive body was big enough to take the plastic box for the rest of the bees to take their time to come out. Then we put the sugar water bucket beside it.
All in all, it went well - I think! Took us around an hour to prepare and do the whole install. The picture below on the left is right after we finished (we left the feed that came with the bees on top to allow those inside time to get out). The picture on the right was taken about two hours later. All seem settled in now.
