Today was one of my favorite days in beekeeping... New hive installations! In the spring if you are adding hives or replacing dead ones you have to get some packages. A package in bee-speak is a box full of bees! Shout out to Billy C of New England Apiaries who hauled our bees up from Georgia for us. I went out to New England Apiaries this morning and stood in line with a bunch of other beekeepers and picked up a few packages of new bees for the Martin Hives 2021 season.
The packages were a new style this year, easier to carry, easier to open and easier to retrieve her royal highness the Queen! She is right inside that little wooden box in the photo below.
My better-beekeeping-half had to work today (shout out to those of you unafraid who fearlessly get the tattoo every day!) so I was on my own in the beeyard today. It's tough to dump bees out of packages and take pictures so you'll have to take my word for it when I say it was glorious!
Once I had the bees out of the package and into the hive, I hung out with them for a bit. Install day is my favorite because since the bees do not have an established home, they're super docile and way less likely to sting. So it's a great day to bee more handsy with these ladies. (Sometimes I can't believe the things I write.) It was funny, though, right?
Now that the new hives have been installed we wait three days and check again to see if the Queen has been released from her cage yet by her loyal subjects.
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