A lovely SCA friend also works with bees. His family owns one of the prominent bee companies in the area. When he heard about the death of my bees he let me know that he was going to get additional bees this Spring and if I would like any. Of course I jumped on the chance and ended up ordering two 3# boxes of Italians.
They arrived last night after a long day of being driven around in the rain and sat in the garage. I was tempted to put up a sign that read "Warning: over 60,000 pissed off females - Do not enter" but I settled with just telling the guys that I had my bees in the garage. As posted yesterday we had freakish weather yesterday with rain and hail, which made me not want to put the bees out just yet. I decided to wait until the morning to see if it was warm enough to put them out there. After waking up and seeing everything outside frozen I decided to leave the in the garage a bit longer.
Jed finished the bee condo today so that we can have it completely separated from the goats. We were debating waiting a little longer to put the girls in but we figured we might as well just go for it. I picked out comb with honey and for new baby bees for the girls and then we took two separate supers in for the girls. We set up the boxes and then I came back to get the boxes with the girls in them. I put on my impromptu pregnant bee suit, which Jed lovingly let me know that I looked very rolly pollie like, and then separated the boxes and carried a box of bees over to the condo at a time. By the time both the boxes were out there I was tired and hot. I tried to pry the sugar jar from the first box but just managed to keep pissing off the bees. Jed was kind enough to go turn on my smoker as I was failing at taking the jar out without making everyone mad. After he brought it out I took the jar out, then the queen, set her up between two frames and then dumped the bees in. They immediately started doing their happy butt dance and slobbering all over the honey frames. I think they liked their new home. After that one was sorted out I tried a new trick with the second box. As much as I enjoyed pissing off my girls I thought I better change things a little to keep me from dropping the sugar jar on the multiple times. I leaned the box slightly so that when I pried the jar up a bit gravity wouldn't just pull it out of my hands. This worked so much better and I was able to get the jar, queen, and girls out in less than 3 minutes, as opposed to the 15+ minutes it took me with the first box.
All in all the girls were in their new homes and ready by the time the rain showed up tonight. I'll check on them in the morning, but I think they'll be happy in their new homes. =) I like happy bees.
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