We've added a third hive to our beehives, and our package of bees arrived on Saturday. The weather was not great, cold and windy, so we thought we'd wait until the next day, Sunday. We kept our bees in the basement to keep them from overheating.
Sunday arrives with wind and 32F. Not good. But we waited until 1 pm and the temperature rose above 50F, and it was time to hive the package. Hiving the package went really well. The worker bees stayed close to the queen in the new hive.
You can watch our video: How to hive a package of bees here.
The bees in the package are surrounding the queen cage and the sugar feeder in the box
Opening the top of the package reveal the queen cage and the sugar feeder can
Removing the queen cage from the bee package
This is the queen cage, the fondant on the left is pierced with a small nail and the worker bees will eat thru this to release the queen once this is put into the hive.
Two bent nails are inserted into the queen cage, with the fondant candy facing up, this queen cage then sits between two frames in the middle of the new hive
After the queen is placed in the new beehive, the bees are added to the hive by shaking the hive package
You have to move the package back and forth
The worker bees cluster around the queen cage that was placed in between the frames.
I tear open the screen of the package to allow the last of the bees to exit to the hive.
An entrance reducer allows the young hive to defend the entrance from robber bees and yellow jackets. I did not have one of those wooden reducers, so I used a mouse guard.