The Arrival!

So on Friday May 28 I drove 2.5 to the Betterbee shop in Greenwich, NY to pick up my two packages of bees. Packages consist of a screened in box that holds approximately 3-4 pounds of bees which generally equates to about 8,000 bees along with 1 queen in a queen cage! As you can imagine, there is quite a bit of buzz coming from that little box!

I arrived there at about 10:00am to quite a few people lined up ahead of me...all in a state of concern. They were supposed to start handing the bees out at 9:00am...but had yet to open their doors! Rumors ran amuck about how there were not enough to go around or the truck was late, etc, etc. Thankfully, about 10:15 they opened their doors and the handouts began. I got my bees and was back on the road by 10:30!

I arrived home and got right to work to introduce the bees to their new home. I had watched several videos on how to install packages and read over and over again how it is done. I found out rather quickly that executing the procedure is much more difficult for the beginner beekeeper than they make it look in the videos! With the first package, I removed the queen cage with no problem...but then I had trouble figuring out how to get the cage attached to the foundation. During my efforts, the cork keeping the queen in her cage busted through and of course the first bee out (she has attendants, don't you know) was the queen bee herself! Luckily she flew directly into the hive and seemed content. I don't know how long that lasted as I hurriedly dumped those 8,000 bees on top of her. Doh!

The way it is SUPPOSED to happen is that the bees eat through a candy plug to "free" the queen...and through this process they come to accept the queen as their boss. I really don't know if my thoroughly messed up procedure will work. I think I will likely need to requeen that colony.

So, you'd think I would have learned from my mistake when I went about doing the second package...but basically the same thing happened. This time, the bees from the queen cage started escaping through the candy plug and so I just placed it in the bottom of the hive and dumped the 8,000 workers and drones on top of it. I guess I better buy two queens, eh?

Other than the queen troubles, everything went well. I did all of the above in shorts and short-sleeved shirt with no gloves nor veil and didn't get stung once! I had read many times that honeybees are quite gentle but never did I think I'd be dumping 16,000 bees into two hives in close proximity and not get stung.

I'll post some pictures...next step is to give the bees some peace and privacy for several days other than to make sure they have plenty of sugar syrup for feed. They need that to get a jump on all the wax building they need to do.

The What...

Once I decided to become a beekeeper, I began to look around on the internet to find out just what would be required. Many beekeeping sites sell full kits for the beginner beekeeper but I found that many of those kits included some "extras" that I likely would not use or would want a better quality of.

I did however find a "hive increase" kit from Betterbee that seemed to best fit my needs. This would give me all the hive boxes, frames, and foundation as well as a few other essential parts of the hive. This kit comes in an assembled as well as an unassembled version. I chose the unassembled version because it would allow me to become more familiar with the pieces of the hive and it also came with wooden frames rather than plastic.

The pieces that came with each of my two kits included 2 brood chambers also known as "deeps", 2 medium chambers known as "supers or honey supers", a wooden inner cover, polystyrene outer cover, reversible bottom board, along with 20 deep and 20 medium wooden frames with crimp-wired foundation. In addition to those items I also purchased a varroa screen, a slatted rack (for better ventilation), a queen excluder (to keep the queen from entering the honey supers) and hive-top feeders for both hives.

Here is a picture of how they all go together...

The Why...

So last Fall, I decided I wanted to be a beekeeper.

Why?

I had heard the many news stories regarding the plight of bees worldwide and the devastating effects of Colony Collapse Disorder as well as many other pests and diseases that are taking their toll on bees. I wanted to do a small part in trying to help bees thrive in my area.

A second reason is that both my wife and I have increasingly moved towards supporting our local economy as much as we can. We have started purchasing the vast majority of our vegetables (and now even meats) from a local farm (Pete's Greens) through a CSA (Community Sustained Agriculture) plan. I think that by keeping bees and making my own honey that I know is healthy and all-natural is just another way of "keeping it local".

The third reason is that I LOVE honey!

It seems that I was destined to be a beekeeper...at least thus far (easy to say since the bees have yet to arrive!). The very next day after announcing my intention to my wife, her beekeeper co-worked received an email from the Vermont Beekeepers Association announcing a grant for new beekeepers. This grant will reimburse new beekeepers 50% of the cost of starting 1 to 2 hives up to $200 per hive! Whoo hoo! It was meant to be!

So I made the decision to be a beekeeper..."Now what?" I asked. Just what is required to house bees?