Bee Day 2019 and First Inspection
Before I talk about Bee Day, I have an update on our wintering hive. It did not survive all of April. About a week before our new bees arrived, we were cleaning out that hive. Nevertheless, we picked up and installed our two packages of Carniolan honey bees on April 20. This year's season was and is under way. Two bee "packages." April 20 was a Saturday and a gorgeous day for picking up bees. We thought we were completely set up for the smoothest installation ever. Instead, our installations were the clumsiest we have ever had. Rather than talk about the way that we tried to install the first package in an unfavorable location and had thousands of bees flying around for a couple of hours, or the way that we accidentally released the queen for the other package and watched her fly away, I will talk about the two main lessons we learned. - We will try to always install bees at or after 6 pm. At this time, the bees are getting ready to settle in and mo...