The honeybees are due to arrive next Sunday or Monday (17th or 18th April), I’m sort of thinking about them as my 20- or 25,000 “mail-order girls”. (All but a handful of bees, the drones, are female. And of the females, there are two castes: workers and the queen).
Spring really feels like it’s arrived this week. We finally hit temperatures in the 70’s for a day or two, and the grass is really greening up! I’ll be taking the hive boxes out to Zweber’s farm Monday or Wednesday, and be ready for the packages to arrive.
Starting out, our hives are going to consist of two deep body boxes which are 9-1/2″ x, 19-7/8″ x 16-1/4. These will be filled with honey, pollen and “brood”, or the egg, larva and pupa stages. After the girls get these deep boxes filled with honey for their survival, we’ll put shallower boxes above the deeps. These boxes will be separated with a screen that keeps the queen in the lower boxes where she will keep laying eggs, but will allow the workers to get honey into the upper sections. By keeping the eggs from being laid in the upper section, this will allow us to get pure honey for ourselves.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
First we get the boxes setup, install the bees and make sure that the queen is healthy and is laying…Here’s an article about package bees
Looking for some nice weather to get these girls started!