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 most of them work on entering the hive.  Anytime before that on a sunny day means bees will be orienting themselves and taking off to check out the surroundings.

- We will make sure that the queen does not get out of the queen cage while we are installing.  The cork fell into the queen cage and we were debating about whether she would get squished if we continued as usual. We should have just covered that opening with a marshmallow and put the queen cage on the bottom of the hive, but instead, we watched her, in what felt like slow motion, fly away and among hundreds of other bees around us. By some amazing chance, we had a queen that wanted badly to be with her attendants and her hive.  After she flew away and we sat trying to figure out what to do, we spotted her right back on the bee bus and she was trying to get in.  We pushed her into the hive and, after she walked under a frame, we quickly dumped the rest of the bees in. 

All of this highlights the way that beekeepers are always learning and that we should never assume we have something perfected when working with wild creatures. Despite the errors and frustration, it was a successful day of working through challenges together as a team. I still managed to snap a few photos of the process and of the bees.

Mr. Bee just before the second installation.

Sunny, sixty degrees, and six-thirty in the evening. This is now our ideal time for installing.

The next photo is my favorite photo of the day, but it requires a little explanation.  

Imagine that we dump the bees into the hive.  20,000 of them. Many drop right into the box and hundreds immediately fly up into the air and in a radius around the bee yard.  They are not aggressive, just circling. How will they find their way back to the hive when they have never been here?  

After a couple of minutes, bees near the hive and entrance starting fanning a floral scent out into the air.  This is achieved by their fast wings plus secretions from the Nasanov Gland, located between the last segments of the body. The resulting fragrance is an attractant to the surrounding bees from their own colony and to any swarmed bees nearby that may be looking for a home.

If you look closely in this photo, you can see the blur of this bee's wings and the last segment of her body bent in order to expose the gland.  She was one of the first bees working to bring the those from her colony back "home". You can also notice Mr. Bee sitting in the background, watching. It is an amazing sight to see how these tiny creatures take on the tasks they do.

Fanning bee, Nasanov Gland.

Newly-installed bees getting ready to enter the hive for the evening.

As far as feeding, we left honey frames in each hive this year instead of starting syrup feeding right away, so it will be a good chance to see how that type of feeding works with a spring that seems to be slow in coming.

Next, check out these bees festooning, holding legs and feet to make a chain.

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Today, we did our first inspection to see if each of the hives has a laying queen. We do this by looking for eggs. As the trees start to blossom and the dandelions bloom, we look for the eggs to help ensure the bee numbers will stay strong to start building up food stores. Speaking of food, we also look to see if bees are storing pollen and/or nectar.

We saw eggs in both hives, and we even spotted the queen in both hives. Awesome! Below is a photo you can search for the queen in. It's a tough one! She has a longer body, shorter wings, a smooth thorax, and, in this case, a much darker coloring than the other bees.

The bees were already bringing in tons of pale green and golden yellow pollen.

Finally, we added a fresh box of empty frames to each hive and started syrup feeding. For a few weeks here, the hives look taller than they are. The inside of each top box has a syrup jar inside.

Overall, the bees seem strong and healthy. We are constantly learning from them: don't worry about setbacks, use a sweet fragrance to bring others back home, and work together as a team.