Whew

Ok so hiving the bees was a LOT easier than I thought it was going to be. They finally showed up this afternoon and I went into a panic. 30,000 bees being talked about in emails and phone calls, is a lot different than 30,000 bees in a box on the kitchen counter. I called my brother who has been a beekeeper for a few years now and he had a few recommendations for me. I got all of my equipment together, called the neighbors who wanted to watch and handed the camcorder to my oldest son. (That video will not be posted, lol) I sprayed my bees with the syrup I made the day before, jarred them down to the bottom of the cage, struggled with the can of syrup that had been shipped with them, finally pulled it out and retrieved the queen cage. The queen was not impressed with me AT ALL. She tried to escape the whole time I was trying to pry the cork out of the top of her little box. I ended up pushing it all the way through and into her cage. Luckily that occupied her while I plugged the hole with half a mini marshmallow. I got the queen cage hung and then jarred the package of bees again to force them all to the bottom of the box. I removed the lid and placed the package in the empty hive body that I had placed on the top of the full hive body. This is not the traditional method but it is the way I was told to do it due to the storm rolling in. I wanted to keep as many bees in the hive as possible, they weren't going to have much time to find their way back in before the storm hit. I put the outer cover on top of it all and viola! I was done. It took less than 10 minutes and no one got stung.