Getting a Box Full of Bees!

Yes.  Literally, a box full of bees.  The little package you see above is just a little bigger than one of my shoe boxes.  It's carrying about 12,000 honey bees, a can of simple syrup, and a queen bee in a little protective cage.

We weren't about to just dive right in to tackle putting these honey bees into our hive.  Oh, by the way, here's a picture of the Worcester hive in the backyard, pre-honey bee installation:

The paint came out really beautifully!  Not bad for the "Oops..." paint aisle!  Right now we're just starting our with the two deep boxes.  We've only put frames in the bottom box.  After we dump the bees, they start drawing out comb on all 10 frames, and fill the frames with honey and eggs, we'll add frames to the second deep box.

Okay, back to the box of 12,000 bees...  To prepare ourselves for what lay ahead, or buzzed ahead (Haha... yeah, lame, I know), the Worcester County Beekeepers Association was holding a series of workshops in one day on what to do when your package of bees arrives and how to install them in the hive...

A Beekeepers convention!  Some people didn't wear any gear... BOLD MOVE.

Notice most of the people without gear have moved away... far away.

Even kids are getting involved.  I think he said this girl was 8 years old!

6 Packages of Bees delivered to the hive.  6 x 12,000!  That's a heck of a lot of bees!

Then we picked up our package of bees, put them in the trunk of the car (there's no way they were going in the back seat!).  We weren't able to get it on video, but here is what we essentially did:



More or less.  (except with gloves, a hat, veil, long sleeves and rubber bands around our wrists and ankles to keep the bees from flying in, and A LOT more nervous!)...

...Tada!

That was the Worcester hive.  And then we did it again at the Princeton hive.

Phew!  Survived without a single bee sting!