Just installed a package... cold nights incoming.

spafmagic · April 21, 2021, 01:39:52 PM

Bee packages were delivered yesterday... and I managed to get mine installed. Tonight and tomorrow night will be 34 degrees and 36 degrees respectively. Should I be worried?

spafmagic · April 21, 2021, 01:40:33 PM

As an added detail, I gave them ten frames of wired Better Bee comb to start, a small strip of a pollen patty, and a pint of left over honey from last spring, fed through the inner cover... the hole sized for a mason jar.

cao · April 21, 2021, 08:01:41 PM

Without any brood to keep warm they should be fine. They will cluster and keep the queen warm.

Hops Brewster · April 22, 2021, 10:22:41 AM

They will be fine. As Cao said, they will cluster up, then as soon as it's warm enough to open the cluster they will begin tending to the household, cleaning, repairing and polishing cells. then when it's warm enough to fly in the morning the foragers will begin searching for resources. You should probably begin seeing pollen coming in by afternoon or earlier.

spafmagic · April 22, 2021, 01:59:43 PM

Quote from: Hops Brewster on April 22, 2021, 10:22:41 AM
... You should probably begin seeing pollen coming in by afternoon or earlier.

Yesterday I saw them at work. No pollen as yet. I think because the queen isn't out of her cage yet, so no eggs... so no need for pollen. By 6:30 p.m. it was only 24 hours since install.

spafmagic · April 22, 2021, 02:11:22 PM

Crazy thing is... after 5 minutes trying to get the syrup can out (pain in the butt to do this year...) I pulled the queen cage out, covered the bees from escaping, only to find out at the queen that came with the package was dead. I immediately called my bee supply store with enough time to get them to stick around a little bit longer, so I could get a living queen from them in exchange.

I think I know why the package queen was dead. There were only TWO holes in the feeding can. TWO! That's not enough for 10,000+ bees to feed from, let alone take any syrup in to convert it for feeding the queen.

The whole afternoon from 2 p.m. onward had hiccups. A 1 hour round trip for a new queen nearly mae me scream... lol

The15thMember · April 22, 2021, 02:17:21 PM

Something I did with my first packages to help them through some cold nights was to warm up a jar of syrup and put in on the hive in the evening so they have the ability to take syrup better in the cold.