Bees Are Home: Package Install Day

The post office run was the warm-up. Picked up the package, talked shop with a timid postman and a genuinely curious post woman who wanted to know what was buzzing in the box. Drove home with thousands of new friends in the back.

An open package cage from the post office. Dozens of honeybees clustered around the entrance ring, thousands more visible in the dark of the cage below. The package, stragglers will make their way to new box soon.

Walked the apiary first to take stock. The shed survived the winter — mostly. Small mouse evidence inside, nothing destroyed. The old colony had a confirmed mouse tenant, which explains some things. All the outside woodware that wasn’t worth saving went straight to the trailer for a dump run. Clean slate.

Wide shot of the apiary site. Small shed with a weathered roof, a single wooden hive on cinder blocks beside it, blue water bowl staged in the foreground. The site, post-cleanup. New hive on the blocks.

Pre-flight.

Mixed up 1:1 sugar syrup on the stove — that swirling white-into-clear shot is more satisfying than it has any right to be.

Sugar syrup in a glass measuring cup, mid-stir with a black silicone brush. White swirls dissolving into clear water. 1:1. Two cups water, two cups sugar.

Suit on (Bruins patch holding strong, fish patch on the sleeve, smiley face on the leg — this suit has earned every one of them).

Selfie inside a beekeeping veil. White suit with a Bruins B logo and a bee in the middle on the chest, fish patch on the sleeve. The suit. Patches earned.

Smoker lit with pellets and a little kindling, good thick white smoke before walking out to the hive.

A metal bee smoker burning on a workbench. Orange flame and white smoke from a tin of smoldering pellets.

The install.

Spray bottle ended up not working. The bees were having none of it. Switched to a few solid puffs of smoke at the entrance and over the package and that’s what unlocked them. Lesson logged: skip the spray next time, go straight to smoke.

Top-down view of an open hive box with frames pulled to make room for the package. A handful of honeybees already crawling on the frame tops.

Pulled the queen cage, checked the candy plug was intact, confirmed she’s in there with attendants. Hung her between the middle frames. Shook the rest of the bees in around her, set the feeder can on top, slid the entrance reducer in, closed it up.

Close-up of a gloved hand holding a small wooden queen cage. Pink candy plug intact, three attendants on the cage. Queen present, candy plug intact, attendants on duty.

Clean water on a cinder block in the blue bowl a few feet off to the side. Standard setup, but worth noting — the bees were finding it within the hour.

Forage signal.

Saw a bee on a dandelion this morning before any of this kicked off. Not mine — too early — but a good sign. The forage is on around here.

Two yellow dandelions in a patch of grass. A bumblebee is half-buried in the right one, working the flower. Not mine. But a good sign.

Punch list.

  • 3D-printed entrance reducer — the wood one is doing the job, but the print queue is open
  • Queen release window: 3–7 days, watch the cage
  • Finish cleaning out the old colony, deal with the mouse situation
  • One-week inspection: confirm release, look for early laying, check syrup level
  • Pull the feeder can once it’s drained

Closed wooden hive on cinder blocks against the side of the shed. BeeCastle single-deep, entrance reduced, galvanized lid.

Bees are home.