And the bees have been installed. Bees bee-haved and got into the hive. Kids behaved watched from a distance. Here are some photos taken by me and lady Genevieve of the process. At 4 years old, I must admit that the girl has some photography skills already. Check out our you tube video for the beginning to end installation (not great resolution as our camera is quite old).
Redwoodshire Top Bar Hive Bee Installation 2017
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| The Laird & Lady of Redwoodshire opening package of bees- armed & ready for installation |
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| Watching and waiting for install to finish |
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| Package of Bees Pre-Installation |
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| Package of bees after Installation- remaining bees will make their way into the hive |
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| Top Bar Hive from Bee Thinking |
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| Making their way into the hive |
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| Feeling good about our package installation |
The Laird thinks he saw some worker bees within the Queen cavity when he installed the Queen cage. This is causing him some concern- as the worker bees are supposed to eat away at the candy plug and get acclimated to the queen and her pheromones. This takes a couple days to do, and then the risk of the workers killing the queen is low. He likes to worry things. I tend to take the path of less worry, and just waiting to see what happens. The sun peaked out for the first time in days today, which is promising for our installation.
We minimized the top bar space to about 11 bars, so that the bees can keep warm and work on filling this space. Some bars are empty brood comb. Some bars are capped honey. And then we included some empty top bars for them to start fresh upon.
Really excited to have bees back at Redwoodshire. With our hive loss last month, it just felt like something was missing. And it was. Had the colony survived, this would be an exciting time to be observing their activity. They love the dandelions and early blooming flowers. This colony has a little head start with a number of bars of comb already drawn for brood, and some bars of honey to eat until they get established.
Bees are pretty amazing creatures, and I look forward to observing them this season and hopefully seeing them through next winter. I love sharing what I know and have already learned about beekeeping with those who are interested.
In other news, I just ordered a few candle molds & supplies from Mann Lake. The friends we acquired our swarm from last Spring are moving and have offered to give us a trash bag of beeswax! I am really looking forward to learning how to make some candles from all this wax we will have on hand. This will likely be an activity for late summer or Fall, as I have a lot of processing of wax to tackle first. Initially, I have to let spread our crushed wax comb out on pans and let the new bees clean all the residual honey off it. They do an amazing job. Then I will set up our homemade solar wax melting system to both filter & melt the wax down to solid pieces. After that I will be ready to get my candle making on! I got 3 different molds to work with. I am hoping to make some gifts from this beeswax.
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