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17 Apr Sun 2011

Bees' Happy Home

After spending a toasty evening in my dining room (see my previous post), we anxiously waited for the temperatures to warm up above 40-degrees and at about 9: 30 a.m. we loaded up the bees in the car's trunk and took them to their new home above Jennigan's Auto Repair.  


 We had placed the boxes the previous weekend and so we carried up the bees and supplies.  (Be sure to enlarge the picture and see how pretty the hives are decorated!)  The decoration not only makes the hives pretty, they help the bees tell which hive is their own after a hard day of visiting flowers.


Fitz gets the smoker loaded up and ready to go, because smoked bees are more docile, happier bees!  


We open the boxes.  The queen is in her own little box with a few attendants to feed and care for her.  The white stuff on the left side of the box is a candy plug that the hive's bees will chew through to get out their queen.  This way she is slowly introduced to the hive and her pheromones have filled the hive before she comes out.  The hive better accepts her with this process.  We hang the queen box in the top of the bee hive...    
Queen cage


... then dump the thousands of bees out on top of her.  The silver can you see at the corner of the hive is the sugar water that had been in the box to nourish them throughout their long trip up from Georgia. 




 After we dump out all the bees, we squirt some smoke over them to make them go down into the hive.  Then we put a feeder with some sugar water and Honey-B-Healthy essential oils on top of the hive and close it all up. 


Now we wait while they get accustomed to their new home!


“Most people don’t have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive. Bees have a secret life we don’t know anything about.”

                   ~From The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Sharon_1
09:05 AM EDT
 
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