Crookedshack

The bee hive has been set up and so far so good.

I picked up the package from Graham’s Bee Works around 11:00am on Saturday May 23rd. While there I also picked up another package along with some other items for my buddy who is also getting started in bee keeping. It was a busy day for the Graham’s and although I had questions there were people ahead of me and behind me in line. After watching some of the Backyard Beekeeping videos and talking to Juanita at Graham’s, I decided to also purchase a screened bottom board. The screened bottom board will help with ventilation as well as with disease prevention. Since I will need all of the help I can get I decided it was a worthwhile purchase.

What I learned:

I learned that the bees are not naturally aggressive (at least this bunch wasn’t) and that as long as you are calm and don’t try to rush the process it will all be ok. Our natural instinct (or maybe it is conditioning) when we hear the buzz of a bee is to begin moving away from the source. So when I am opening the package and the buzzing is getting louder yet I don’t have the syrup can out yet, your brain is a little confused. It is pretty amazing though that with a few calm thoughts and focusing on the task you begin to realize that the bees are not concerned a whole lot with you but rather with their queen. Once I placed the queen in the hive I was ready to dump in the package. That is the really unnerving part because now the lid is completely off of the box and you are supposed to tap it pretty firmly on the ground to free the bees from clinging to the screen and wood so that you can dump them out.