A Second Package

Well, it's been awhile since my last posting so I'm a little behind. My wife and I made a trip down to Florida to help our daughter Emilie make the transition from college sophomore to working in Costa Rica for the summer. On my return, the bees seemed to be doing fine, just work, work, working away. Probably didn't even miss me! Prior to our trip though, I did get my second package installed. And it is that experience I'll recount for you this time around.
Back in November or so, when I began to get into this whole thing, I read that packages of bees and queens would be at a premium if one waited until spring to order. Not wishing to be left out, I jumped right in to place an order. I decided to go with Wilbanks in Georgia first. A reputable outfit, I called and got the impression I may have been a tad bit early for placing an order. They did say that they would send along a catalog and price sheet though, and so I waited with eager anticipation. Having not joined BANV as yet, I had no way of knowing that Wilbanks were the folks who supplied bees to the club. In fact, it was typical for two packages to be reserved for students in BANV's beginner classes with their annual order of some 900 packages. As I say, I didn't know this and when I grew impatient after a couple of weeks waiting for their catalog, I figured I would order from someone else. Next on my list was a company in Texas called BeeWeaver. They sent me a nice color catalog touting their mite-free bees - well, that's a good trait, I thought - so I picked up the phone and ordered up a package right then and there. I was told that they would be delivered by the USPS in April.
It was shortly after this that I joined BANV and was told of my grave error in ordering bees from Texas. Turns out that Texas has been included in the territory of the Africanized Honey Bee, the alleged "killer bees" of media lore. These bees are not actually deadly, but they are far more ferocious in defending their hive than European Honey Bees. Meaning that several hundred or even several thousand of these girls may decide to chase you for long distances just for the chance to make your life a lot more painful. Beekeepers work very hard to avoid having this breed of bee introduced into their area for obvious reasons.
This was the concern of the folks I met at BANV and I was told that I would have to "re-queen" at some point after I installed the package to ensure that any Africanized DNA would disappear with the new brood. This process involves plucking the old queen out of the hive, and replacing her with a nice Italian girl with a better temper.
Anyways, to make a long story short, I ended up getting just one package through the club's Wilbanks order and the BeeWeaver bees were to arrive a week later. The target date was April 18, but as that day came and went and several more days to boot, I was getting nervous. On Friday, the 20th, I called BeeWeaver and was told my package was going out that day via Priority Mail. I knew I was leaving for Florida just a week later, so I kept my fingers crossed. Well, Monday went by. No bees. Then Tuesday and Wednesday. I called the Post Office and was told that Priority Mail didn't gaurantee 3-4 day delivery! Terrific! I began calculating how I would deal with a package of bees that arrived with no time to hive them before I left for my trip. Of course, the weather turned colder and wetter as Thursday dawned and I finally got the call from the Post Office that my little killers had arrived. Forecasts for Friday indicated thunderstorms, so it appeared I had a very small window available to get these girls into their new home. Running home from work at lunchtime.
The bees had been through the mill. There were perhaps 2 inches of dead bees in the bottom of the package (they stunk to high heaven) and as it turned out their feeder can was drained dry. I had no time to lose. About 11:30, I raced home and got everything quickly prepared. I had made a gallon of sugar syrup that morning and prepared a pollen patty. Thankfully, the queen appeared fine when I pulled her cage out. I stapled her cage to the top bar this time to try and avoid the burr comb that was built the last time around. I then dumped some bees onto her cage. With all the dead bees in the package, I was reluctant to just dump the rest of the bees into the hive, so instead, I removed 4 or 5 frames and sat the package into the hive with the opening up and closed everything. I figured this way the healthy bees would come out, leaving their dead sisters in the package.
This stategy worked, because when I checked the hive on Friday, the bees were out of the package and all over the frames. I removed the reeking package and replaced the frames so the girls could get going on drawing comb and closed the hive up again. Almost immediately I noticed many, many bees flying around the entrance. So many, so soon, that I got a little panicky that maybe the other hive was launching a full scale assault or that, in fact, I did have on my hands a warrior clan of Afrika Korps bees. I called Tom Merz, the president of BANV for some guidance. He told me that they were most likely bees from the new package doing orientation flights on the hive and that I didn't have anything to worry about. I can assume this to be the case, because on my return from Florida, both hives exhibited the normal activity of bees flying in and out of their respective hives, blithely ignoring each other. I'm also happy to say that to this point, I haven't noticed anything unusual in the way of aggressiveness with the new batch. Maybe they would rather make pasta...
Next up: a second inspection of hive number 1.