The bees arrived. It was getting late. I was getting anxious. But just after the sun settled for the night, my friend Mark arrived with our two packages. He brought us 13,637 worker bees and two queens. We counted them. The queens, that is. These bees were part of a shipment that came through our local bee club, which ordered 202 packages from the folks at Scandia Honey who brought the bees from New Zealand.
Why New Zealand? It’s warm there. Queen breeding and beekeeping are in full swing. We’d gladly buy the bees from the tropical parts of Canada, if Canada had tropical parts. Until global warming fully kicks in, we’ll have to import our bees from the world’s hot spots. With the bees offloaded from Mark’s bee-mobile, we immediately set about welcoming our imported foreign workers to their new homes. Every time I release immigrant bees, it reminds me of how my own grandparents arrived in the Americas from central Europe. Those folks were every bit as penniless as these New Zealand bees. (But that’s a tale for another day.) My grandfolks did OK. I hope these bees will, too.
Earlier in the day, my son Daniel and I placed two single-storey brood chambers in the back yard. This is a new project, new equipment, new bees. Regular readers know that I’ve owned several honey farms over the years and thousands of hives and I’ve been tripping over bee boxes for about fifty years. But this time is different, just like all the other times before were.
Since many readers of this blog are new beekeepers, I figured it would be helpful if I re-experienced the joy of starting a couple of hives at home, reporting on all the mistakes I make each and every day. I’ll still write about beekeeping news, science, and culture from my usual ten-mile-high view, but from time to time, I’ll come back to these backyard bees and describe beekeeping from ground level.
Before the bees. We set up two boxes like this – the feeder is farthest from view, then two drawn-out used frames, a gap, another drawn comb, and (closest to us) two new black plastic frames. The gap in the center is where the bees from the cage will be released, then three more drawn combs will be added into that space.
In our back yard, we found an almost perfect place to bee, so we settled hive chambers atop bottom boards, and covered the caverns with lids. As this is a new bee project, my 15-year-old son wanted to try the fancy-dancy new plastic rims. He says they look like space-age bee boxes and he’s right. I wanted to give these thick-walled boxes a try because they are well-insulated and we won’t have to worry so much about our cold summer nights. Nor, I’m told, will we need to winter-wrap these units later in the season, the way that I had always done with wooden equipment. Along with the fancy boxes, we picked up new-age plastic frame-feeders and some solid one-piece plastic brood frames. My son Daniel filled the feeders with some sugar syrup just sweeter than equal parts sugar and water. And that’s where things sat for a couple of hours while we waited for the bees to arrive.
We released the workers from their cages urging them into their new boxes. Freedom for the bees. It’s rather liberating. We release the honey bees out of those cages and allow them to occupy our boxes – or not. The bees are always free to leave. They don’t have to stay with us. They can fly up into the trees or drift off to explore the vast prairies that surround our city. Their new home has a door and the door is always open. Go, if you must, but stay if you like. However, it’s getting dark, there’s a chill in the air, the home we are offering to the Kiwi immigrant-bees is warm and safe, just the right size, and it has a well-stocked pantry. They’ll probably stay, but they are free to leave. Their choice.
Installing packages, as we call the process of settling foreign bees into Canadian houses, takes about five minutes for each hive. I’ll let our photos from last night’s adventure tell the rest of the story.
The worst part of last night’s job was separating the twins. We received two packages. The cages were vigorously stapled together. They might as well have been welded or super-glued. Seriously, this was rather brutal. Neither the bees nor I liked the shaking, twisting, jiggling and prying required to pull the units apart. Someone should do something about that.
Now you can see the cage hovering over the gap where the bees will be released. I’m pulling out the feeder that came with the package. It’s basically a plug that keeps the bees in the cage (and holds their food while they are traveling). Once the can was pulled free, honey bees gently tumbled into their new home.
Here you can see the cage’s feeder/plug in my hand while Daniel shakes the bees into the hive. By the way, have you heard of the ‘barefoot beekeeper’? I’m wearing socks.
Daniel had shaken the bees into the gap, I placed the three missing gap-frames back in their spot and now Daniel is getting the last few bees out of the cage and into the hive.
This looks like a small weak hive. It is. There are a lot of bees which you can’t see, but a two-pound package has only about ten percent of the number of worker bees that are in a strong colony in summer. But if the queen is good and if the honey gods are merciful, this package can make about two hundred pounds of excess honey in July and August. That’s the closest thing to magic that I know of.
… and we are done.
In our area, at this time of year, the pollen is mostly from crocus and willow. That’s what brightens the bare brown desolation of April in Alberta. Snow still chills the ground in icy mounds which litter our landscape, yet honey bees have found some food!
Thinking about this, the ecology seems rather puzzling. For millennia, North America had no honey bees. The continent’s native bees (bumblebees, masons, ground-nesting miners, wood-boring carpenters, hole-inhabiting leafcutters) start their season with a single, dazed queen and no workers. These bees become active later in the spring than honey bees. Our honey bees occupy nests of thousands, staying warm and active in their cluster even on cold days. In our area, they survive as a clustered, cloistered family for two hundred wintery days. When a mild spring afternoon finally arrives, hundreds of foragers race out to exploit scattered tufts of willow and rare prairie crocus blossoms. This might be a week or two before the first native bees rouse from their slumber. Honey bees have an advantage when it comes to a willow or crocus blossom. They jump it the moment it smiles.
you see to the left. Then he spent a few hours making art and presented the result as a surprise birthday gift. As an artist, he is creative but methodical. You can see how he printed the photo in black and white, then gridded it to get the proportions. He kindly made my hair less gray but I think that he could have given me less forehead, too! You can see that he has an impressionist style, but for the forehead, he went for realism.
One of the panelists was 
Having three professionals on the panel, all of whom are hedging and interpreting questions differently, can be eye-opening for some new beekeepers. One of the harder things for novices to accept is that the world of beekeeping is loose and fast and everyone may be right and wrong at the same time – depending on the situation. Every question has multiple answers. Experienced beekeepers often respond with, “Well, it depends…” leaving the novice beekeeper wondering why there is no single correct answer. Although there are important “correct” concepts (“don’t kick the hive” and “bees don’t fill supers that are left in the shop”), most bee things are complicated. This is worth remembering if you are new to bees.
Most folks I know reset their clocks last night. This is great for hobby beekeepers who race home after work to don gaudy bee suits and ignite smoker fuel, hoping to beat the setting sun. Not so fast, Beekeepster. You can slow down and still enjoy a whole extra hour of afternoon beekeeping.
Tired of irritating your neighbours with your pesky bees? Help is on the way. A very bright professor at Oregon State, 
