The bees are back!

[Kris^]

Hey all!!!

It's been a while since I last posted, although I've been dropping in to read every now and then.  Just nothing of much interest to say, I guess, and many other things yanking my attention away.

So.  My last hive died in January, and I was very sad.  It was time to order some packages, so I called a place in mid-NJ, and didn't get a call back for a week or so.  Getting antsy, I order 4 packages from a place in Georgia, with delivery set for the first week of May.  Then got a call from the first guy I contacted, and he could have 4 for pickup in  mid-March.  Of course, I took them!

Hived up the first 4 colonies on April 15th and they settled right in at the old place under the maple tree out back.  Ten days later I get a call from another forum member who's getting out of it, asking if I wanted a hive?  Of course!  It is a big one, 2 deeps and 2 supers, all full of bees, and I set them near the new ones.  Because I'd gotten the hives set earlier in the month, all my apple and pear trees got properly pollinated.   :)

The last set of packages came in this morning, and I'm a little disappointed.  Even though shipping date was allegedly May 3rd, they've obviously been in those cages longer than two days.  All the syrup was gone, and they'd begun building comb inside!  One had a really nice piece that plopped right out when I dumped them in.  These weren't simply "artificial swarms," but young colonies established in these cages.  Defensive about the home they were now building.  You can imagine, then, how upset that they were when I tore their homes apart and dumped them in strange-smelling boxes.  It was a harrowing install, and they're still churning around the hives 2--3 hours later.

Maybe a worse disaster (but then, maybe minor) is where I placed the hives.  I decided to place this group off the south wall of our larger greenhouse, the one that has the roofs that open wide and a wall that rolls up the length of the house.  On the south wall.  Which was open when I installed these excited bees.  And many of the bees flew through this wide opening to check out what's inside.  (Several thousand plants in flats and baskets, mostly all blooming right now.)  What we discovered is that bees don't go out the way they come in.  They go up, toward the sun -- and bounce against the inflated plastic roof.   Hundreds of them (if not over a thousand) bouncing along the roof and collecting at the gutter edge.  So we opened that roof up wide, hoping they would catch the drift of fresh air and follow it out.  Which a few did.  But the roof opens facing north, they are reluctant to head away from the sun while it's still shining.  We closed the wall to keep more from coming in, and hope that as the sun sets closer in the the northwest, they follow it out.  There are fewer in there now than there were an hour ago.  We thought we'd open the wall again as evening set it, and perhaps spray the remaining bees down with a water hose -- when they got back up again, they'd fly out the wall.  Comments???

This is an aggravated bunch of bees:


What a wonderful windbreak from the north wind!  (The bottom section of the wall was all rolled up earlier.)


But . . .




-- Kris

[KONASDAD]

Congrats! Hope they are well.

[indypartridge]

I don't have any advice for you, but I thought your observations were fascinating.

[Kris^]

Well, as it turned out, by evening probably 95% of the bees had made their way out of the house.  Only a few dozen were left hanging on the bows and braces.  We're going to eventually start opening that wall again, and hope that after the colonies have orientated themselves to their hives they'll not get so confused.  We hope.

-- Kris

[CBEE]

 :-D :-D :-D