Monday, May 16, 2016

spring things...

  (5/10)   So after all my (their) hard work of getting threw the winter.... I ended up losing my little bee hive afterall. We had a nice warm spell of weather, the bees were all out flying, getting ready for brood, doing their bee thing.. and then a cold snap. They were gone... and I again, was extremely sad. I just love having bees, I like to watch them fly around, and just know that they are there. We cleaned out the hive and found a lot of honey, so they had plenty to eat... they just didn't stay warm. 
My friend John keeps bees as well.. I was telling him my tale of woe.. and found out he had dealt with exactly the same thing. He said he had ordered some more bees and would going to collect them, and suggested I call to see if any bees were still available. Much to my delight, they had some packages left.. so I put in my order and John very nicely offered to pick up my bees when he got his. 
I haven't worked with "packages" before, I usually get "nucs".... but John assured me the packages do well, especially if you have a hive to put them in, where they can just take over... so I decided to give it a try. They arrive in a box, and the queen is in her own little box. This is because she is really not the queen of the hive yet, and the workers need to get to know her to accept her as their queen. We placed the queen box in the hive, and in time the workers will spring her and then she will be their queen. So, in a few days, I will need to check and make sure she is free....
Once we had her settled, it's just a matter of dumping (literally) the bees out into the hive.....
There is three pounds of bees here... since there is no way to count them, keepers have found that about three pounds is a good start to a hive...... it's amazing how calm they are... probably more like shell shocked with all the traveling they had done...and they basically seemed happy to find themselves back in a hive....
Gentle brushing to encourage them out of the way...
on go the tops......
And it's back to business.... it will take them a few days to learn where they live, where the food sources are (I will be feeding them as well) and get their queen doing her thing, but in about a week, they will be all settled in and I am just thrilled to have them around......
Logan girl is doing so well with all of her training... she likes walking up the barn with me in the mornings while I do chores. She's 9 months old and I have a feeling that it isn't going to be too much longer before the call comes and it will be her turn in time...... 
I had some "fears" about my garden. It felt like everyone else had their flowers popping out and mine were so far behind. But, we finally got a bit of warm weather and all of a sudden.... there they were!!!! I'm pretty excited about this, and hope that I can keep a nice garden going all summer....
Logan seemed to enjoy seeing them as much as I did.......
And reminded me... that we should always take a little time to stop..........