Hey, Tonight I just finished hiving my bees, which arrived from down under today. My beekeeping instructor did a short field day at 6pm letting us hive some of his packages, and then we left to go home and hive ours. I got home around 830pm, and quickly prepared some sugar syrup for the frame feeders. I added 4.5 grams of fumagilin for nosema to each frame feeder. While the sugar was cooling, so I could add the fumagilin, I ran outside to finish adding entrance blockers, reducing the entrances to two inches. I slid a gravity waterer into each opening and stuffed the holes with grass. By the time the sugar syrup was done It was dark, so I had to light a propane lantern and hang it in the hive hut I built to house the hives. Each package had four pounds of Carnolians and a queen. Once my veiless fiance had taken some photos and ran back to the house I started. I opened each package and poured the whoe thing into the middle of the brood box where I had removed the middle three frames. The bees didn't seem to like this as much as during the day and the buz was incredible! I had unhooked the queen cage and hung it from the two middle frames once I had replaced them. Put the queen excluder on, the inner cover and then the outer lid. I did this with each and went inside happy that everything seemed to go so well. Once inside I checked out the two stings I got, one on each wrist, which didn't seem worse than a mosquito bite. I was relieved as I didn't know what my reaction would be as I have'nt been stung since childhood, and even then wasn't sure if they were bees. My grandmother is deathly allergic and carries an epi pen so my reaction was in the back of my mind!
Wouldn't you know it when I unsuited and sat down to look at my pics, i noticed the pollen patties sitting on the table staring at me...So i suited up and went back out...when i opened up the hives again I was pleasantly surprised to find that the bees had spread out along the frames and stayed there while i put the pollen patties on. The lound buzz was gone, and they had more of a gentle murmour, ah lovely sound. This may bee a ramble but I'm stoked about my first hiving and can't wait for the season to progress. My fiance's birthday is today the 18th so we are headed down south to spend the day in seattle shopping for antiques, so its a relief that the bees came finally and I have a few days of leaving them alone, and rest. Still trying to work out how to get my pics from hotmail to post but the season is begun and I plan on doing mad photos of each step! Cheers.