JUST IN! The BEES have arrived

3# package of bees is equivalent to about 10,000 bees & 1 queen

We just got back from the Post Office, where we picked up our new package of honey bees.  Last year, we were fortunate to obtain a swarm of bees from the Laird's friend.  He caught the swarm in a cardboard nucleus box-  we picked them up- dumped them into our hive.  Easy peasy.  Slightly different process for ordering a 3# package of bees.  We were unsure which post office the bees would arrive at for pick up.  When would they call?  Lots of unknowns.  I signed up for text message tracking of our package, and was able to follow the bees journey that way.  The post office called me a hour ago, and off we went.  They were waiting for us on the front counter- all ready to come to Redwoodshire.  The bees look excellent, so far as we can tell.  There are only a handful of dead bees on the bottom of the box- which is a good sign.  Now we will wait until later this afternoon/ evening to install the package into our Top Bar Hive.  This is the preferred time to install packages of bees is during the evening, so that the bees have time to get oriented to their new home.

Another difference between a wild swarm of bees and a package of bees that you purchase is the queen.  A swarm comes with it's own queen- a queen that it knows and it part of it's genetic line.  With commercial bee production, the queens are produced and then packaged in a little cage with a candy plug.  The bees don't know their queen.  They just get paired up and set off.  The candy plug acts serves to slowly acclimate the queen to her new colony.  The worker bees eat away at the candy plug, and then during the time, the queens pheromones are recognized by the workers and they have that time to get accustomed to each other.  The worker bees would attack and kill the queen if there isn't sufficient time for acclimation.
The kids are as excited as us to have bees again.  They are so fascinating to observe.

If interested, stay tuned for the package installation into our Top Bar Hive which we will be doing later this afternoon.  Posts to follow.  We will likely contribute various other posts throughout the season, with inspection and how they are doing.