Home Sweet Home Michigan: Honeybees!!

The Honeybees that came today went into the teal and yellow hive. This hive is known as the Queen Betty hive. Many have asked, "Why bees?". Honeybees are essential to pollination and food production and they take up a relatively small footprint. The pink hive remains empty until next weekend. For the time being the pink hive has been taped shut to keep the other bees out.

3 pound package of bee, which is about 10,000 honeybees.

Honeybees are also known as Apis Mellifera. The bees traveled up to Michigan yesterday by trailer from Jessup, Georgia. When they arrived here this morning they were apparently in a state of "torpor" or shock from the colder temperatures and they were all laying on the bottom of the boxes, which is also what they look like when they are dead in the box. We waited until 11:30am to pick-up our bees, which was easy because pick-up was in our backyard, here at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. We actually walked over to get them. By waiting until 11:30am the sunshine had warmed them up and they were hanging from the sugar can like normal.

Brian suited up. It is most important when working bees to always wear your gear.

Jenn is suited up.

Together is always better!!

Honeybees are interesting creatures. They can communicate to each other to by a "waggle dance". They can tell each other where to find honey. They can measure the dimensions of their homes and communicate those dimensions back to their colony. In a colony there are three types of honeybee, the worker bees, drones, and the queen. The queen and the drones always have the same job throughout their lifespan. The queen will always do what she does, which is lay eggs and the drones only have one job and that is to fly away from the hive and mate with virgin queens. The worker bees will have different jobs throughout their lifespan and the job they have at a given time will depend on how old they are. When they hatch they become nurse bees. Once they graduate from nurse bees they could become house cleaning, defenders, attendants to the queen, foragers, egg attendants, runners to the honey super, scout bees, etc.

Feeding Board. Feeding this hive of bees is most important because it is a package. A package does not come with any part of a built home. They have to build everything from scratch. In doing this the bees don't have time to go out and forage for nectar or pollen. The rectangular hole is a pollen patty smashed into the wire. This provides the bees protein. The 2 circular holes get mason jars of sugar water turned upside down. There are tiny holes in the lid of the mason far that allow the sugar water to be drawn out by the bees, but not leak out.

Lighting the smoker, which we didn't need today, but it is an essential piece that is needed anytime you are working bees. The smoker is used to "shut off" the bees attack pheromone and calm them down. A package of bees is usually not aggressive, because they do not have any home to defend. Now when I go back into the hive in a couple days to check on them and make sure they released the queen they might not be quite as calm. An interesting fact, never eat anything containing banana prior to working a hive. Bananas have the same scent as the bees attack pheromone.

Opening the package. Opening and installing the bees actually wasn't hard at all. The wooden box has an upside down can of sugar water with tiny holes that feeds the bees. This is important because of the long trip from Georgia. Before taking out the sugar water can, there is a wooden board that was stapled over the can that has to be removed. When Jenn took the can out, she slid the wooden board back over the open hole so they couldn't start flying out of the box. Prior to shaking them out of the box and into the hive, she sprayed them with 1:1 sugar water that we made this morning. This helps prevent them from flying around while dumping them into the hive. It was interesting, once the bees were sprayed they all fell to the bottom of the box and were cleaning or "licking" each other.

Prior to shaking them into the box the queen must be removed. You don't want to beat the crap out of the queen. In a package she always hangs from a slit in the wooden box that is made by the sugar/water can. She comes in this little box that has a few nurse bees in the box with her to take care of her. Each end of the box is plugged with a cork. Jenn removed the two corks and placed a marshmallow in both ends. This is important because the bees have to accept the queen and release her themselves. This is the way the hive accepts the queen. This queen is already mated and has all the eggs she will need for her lifespan. She is also marked, so you will notice that she has a blue dot on her back. Jenn requested she be marked, because being new to bee keeping we wanted to be sure we could find her.

See her blue dot?? Her body is longer than the other bees in the box. Once the hive gets honeycomb built, a queen will lay between 1,500-2,000 eggs a day. She is a busy bee!! There is a special way to place this box in the hive. It has to be attached to one of the frames, but the marshmallow end has to point up. This ensure that if the nurse bees inside with her die they don't plug her escape hole. It is pretty typical to go back in 2-3 days to make sure they release her. At that time is she is released this box is removed from the hive.

This is a deep brood box. There are a total of 10 frames in this box. Jenn took out 4 frames to make a space to shake the bees into. The frames have real wax foundation, which we are curious to see how the bees take to this.

Bee dumping time!!

It is easier to get them into the box if you can knock them into a ball.

Adjusting frames and watching the bees.

Just dumped into the box.

Trying to put sugar water on without smashing any bees.

The sugar water jar to the left needed refilling by the end of the day.

It is typical to have some stranglers left in the package box they came in. It is normal to leave the box at the entrance of the hive and they will make it into the hive on their own. They know to do this because of the queen pheromones.

The bees are clustered at the entrance of the hive. When starting a hive you need to put an entrance reducer on, so that it makes the hive easier to defend while they are building their home.