Last Saturday (April 14th) we drove to Columbus to have lunch with our son and then go on to Conrad Hive and Honey to pick up 4 packages of bees that we ordered. Our intention last year was to never have to buy package bees again. Well, with the losses we sustained this past winter we weren’t sure if we were going to have any bees left so we went ahead and got four on order. They are Italian packages from down south. We mainly got them so that we would have bodies for when our Russian queens arrive in May in order to get them started. If these Italian packages turn out ok, then they will become another part of our apiary.

Saturday’s weather forecast had a big rain storm coming in that was going to last through Sunday. We kept the hammer down on the way back from Columbus hoping to get these packages home and installed before the rain moved in. I want to thank the other drivers that felt they needed to drive even faster than I was and who were kind enough to monopolize the police’s attention while I was passing them. That was very considerate of them. 🙂  We got home just in time to change clothes, load up the truck and get to our apiary. This was the first time that we were going to try spraying a package of bees with oxalic acid before installation. Earlier we had mixed up a hand spray bottle of 1:1 sugar syrup and oxalic acid (2.8% mixture).  We removed the syrup can and queen before we sprayed both sides of the packages. The queens were installed between two frames of drawn comb. We added another two foundationless frames on either side of these. That left just enough room in our 8-frame boxes to set the package box in the hive with the hole uncovered. We figured this way it would give the oxalic a little more time to get spread around versus dumping the package in the hive. Each hive was given a portion of pollen patty and a hive top feeder was put on top of the brood box. We got two packages installed before it started to rain. That initial shower lasted less than 5 minutes but it was enough to get Julie and I both pretty wet. We got the third package installed in another 8-frame box and the fourth package went in to a horizontal Langstroth. That hive also got a portion of pollen patty along with a division board feeder installed with sugar syrup. We buttoned everything up, double checked for tools and got in the truck just before it started to rain again. And it never stopped until sometime Sunday night.

Monday evening we took a quick look at the hive top feeders to make sure they still had enough feed. It didn’t look like they had found this food source yet so we just put the lids back on and went home.

Wednesday afternoon it was going to get up to 50 so we planned to go in and check that the queens had been let out, or else we were going to let them out. The bees were showing activity at all of the hives. This was the first really decent day these bees had since they were installed and they were taking advantage of it. Package bees flying 041818 Lots of traffic in and out. Seemed like they were doing a lot of orientation flights and going to the bathroom. All four of the queen cages had the candy eaten away and the queens were free to leave. In 2 of these the queens were still hanging out inside the cage. Lots of bees hanging all over the cage wanting to take care of her. I removed the screen from the cage and with a little encouragement got the queen to join her subjects. The other 2 queen cages were already vacated by the queen. We saw one of the queens walking on the comb. The fourth queen we did not see. I didn’t want to mess with them too much so we just buttoned the hive up and will take a closer look on the weekend.