Bees!

Warre (war-ay) hive

While I've had my hive done for awhile now (pictured above), yesterday began my bee adventure in earnest. In the morning I picked up 3 packages of bees, 1 for me and 2 for friends. It was an interesting experience to have something in the back of your car humming.  I forgot to take a picture so the one below is courtesy of my friend Kelly after she picked her bees up from me. 

I also have no pictures from the installation. I didn't have nearly as easy an installation as Kelly and wasn't organized enough to have my camera somewhere it could record for me. 

Last week my research on installing and taking care of the bees picked up some momentum. I received a couple good bee books as presents from my parents and have been reading those all winter, but while they taught me a lot about bees in general, they had little to say about the warre hive. Since it is different than the standard Langstroth or even Top Bar (what Kelly has) I had to do some additional research. First thing I realized was I wasn't nearly as prepared as I thought I was. I realized in my reading that I was going to need another box. Even though all the kits you buy and most of the pictures you see about the warre only show 2 boxes, I learned it's better to give them the third right away so if they need it it's there without you having to constantly monitor them and then try to lift the whole hive to put another box on the bottom (since warre hives build from the top down). So I ordered another box and paid for 3 day delivery so it would get here before my bees did. Unfortunately the company had a backlog and didn't get the box sent out for 6 days. I complained and they refunded my shipping price but that doesn't help that the box won't get here until tomorrow. So we'll have to deal with that next week. 

I also didn't know until last week that I was going to need to feed my bees for awhile after installing them. I chose the warre hive because it suits my hands off approach and I just assumed since I was going to let nature take it's course, I wouldn't need to worry about feeding unless we had a bad season and they didn't have enough stores going into winter. Well, after reading I realized that there's no way they'd have the energy to make a successful hive if I didn't feed them. One problem with that, the warre hive does not lend itself nicely to feeding. The langstroth and even the top bar have a couple of options but the most popular option I saw for the warre involved an extra box and a homemade feeder. I'm ok with the homemade feeder but my extra box was nonexistent at this point. Then someone posted on the warre facebook group about their baggie feeder. She was asking about ants but just happen to mention the feeder. That led me to find an easy and cheap way to feed the hive. I needed to make a 3" spacer box though. Luckily I had a spare piece of 1x3 from an unknown project sitting in the garage. I did some quick measurements and horrible cuts. It is more difficult that Wolf makes it look to use a circular saw with no one holding the wood for you and no table to put anything on! My cuts were horrible and the resulting box sits crooked but hopefully it will do the job. What are you going to do when you figure this out the night before your bees come and you don't have help? This crooked spacer sits on top of the top box and then inside that you put a baggie of sugar water on top of the bars. I found someone that talked about a sugar slurry and after looking into it I liked that idea a lot better. Trying to work with a baggie of liquid and then cut holes in it while it's sitting on the hive didn't sound fun to me. With the slurry I cut the holes before going out there and I could easily  move it without the sugar spilling all over the place, so when I was putting the hive back together after installation, throwing the bag on there didn't take up any time. 

Now that I had figured out the food and watched a bunch of videos on installing the bees, I felt pretty confident. My next step the following morning was to get the site I was going to install the bees setup. Wolf didn't want them to close to the house, understandably. I had always planned on putting them in the corner of the front yard, under the tree, facing the pasture. Problem is the ground there is not level in 2 directions. It took me awhile to find a fairly level spot and then use cardboard to level out each leg until the table sat level. 

Once that was done I was ready to install. I got my spray bottle of sugar water ready, a bee brush, and my bee hat. Taking out the queen went pretty well. There were more bees than I expected still stuck to the bottom of the feeder can, but I just set it on it's side and covered the hole on the package. I replaced the cork in the queen cage with a piece of marshmallow. I really wish this company used a candy plug, pulling the cork and getting the marshmallow in there without letting the queen escape was a little nerve racking. She wanted out! 

I placed the queen inside the hive and as much as I hated it, I had to thump the package to get the bees loose to pour them into the hive. I didn't do it as much as others I watched and I didn't worry about emptying the package completely. I just got as many as I could out, set the package by the entrance, and put everything back together. While putting everything back together I realized wearing jeans with baggy bottom cuffs and sneakers wasn't the best choice. I had a lot of bees climbing all over my shoes and inevitably up my pant leg. Understandably one stung me when it got stuck too high. I wasn't mad at the bee, in fact I felt sorry for it since it just gave it's life to defend itself against fabric. I was mad at myself for not thinking about at least wearing boots. 

Bee sting on my leg that night.

The bees climbing up my pant leg distracted me and I made a few silly mistakes. First I put the top of the hive on backwards, then the very top was crooked, then I left my tools near the hive. Eventually I got it all settled and was happy.  

While all this was going on the dogs were of course hanging out nearby. Apparently a big black dog is a threat to bees even when they don't have a hive to protect. Once the bees were set free a few of them went straight for Jasmine. I told her to go inside and once she was about 15ft away she realized that was far enough to be out of the danger zone and watched from their the rest of the time. Poor thing. 

After the bees were installed, my friend and I (she came to watch me before installing her bees) were talking on the other side of the house. Jasmine was suddenly going crazy and there were a couple bees buzzing her. I told her to go inside and she gladly did. Then the bee turned it's attention on me. I don't mind a bee buzzing around me but this one got stuck in my hair. I got it out and it came right back. This time as I was trying to get it out, it went down the back of my shirt! I don't think there's a way to safely get a bee out of your shirt without it feeling in danger and stinging. I ended up having to rip my jacket and shirt off right there in the driveway, and it still got caught in my hair on the way out. Standing in the driveway in my bra tying to get a bee out of my hair.. probably pretty safe to say it was not the experience my friend nor I expected to have that day. Yes, it stung my back and I had to pull the stinger out. When a bee dies attacking something it releases pheromones that bring other bees around to defend whatever the attack was. At this point my friend and I retreated to the safety of the house and I steered clear of the yard for a few hours. When I went back later that afternoon the package was empty and there were only a few bees on the outside of the hive. 

It stormed last night and was drizzling this morning. A good time to take a peak inside the observation window since none of them would be outside the hive. Here is what I saw

In the bottom photo you can see them covering the queen and hopefully they are building comb in at the top. Let the adventure begin!