Over this past weekend, on Saturday, I helped Mark install a package of honeybees into one of his hives. We began by driving to the house of the guy who distributes the bees. I brought and donned my new bee suit, veil, and gloves.
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| Trying on the bee suit the day it arrived. |
The guy had a couple of hundred packages of bees, and people came and went all day picking up their bees. With Mark's package of bees between my feet in the car, we drove back to his house.
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| Keeping an eye on the bees during the drive back to Mark's house. |
As we drove, the bees were quietly buzzing. Also, I could hear a constant, low rustling sound as they crawled over and around each other in the package. Below are two more pictures of the package of bees, after we arrived at his place.
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| Package of bees. The can in the center of the box has sugar syrup for the bees. |
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| Another view of the package of bees. |
I didn't get pictures of the actual installation. But, it went well. The hive on the left in the pictures had bees that survived the winter. The one on the right, the smaller one, is the hive into which we installed the bees.
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| Mark's two hives. |
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| You can see the empty package on the hive with the newly installed colony. |
This has definitely piqued my interest in ordering bees for the Spring of 2013.
