Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Package Bee Installation

Spring is in the air here in the ATL and my 2010 bees arrived just in time. This year I bought two packages from the Walter Kelley company, hoping they would be less aggressive than last year's nucs from Moultrie, GA. They shipped from Kentucky on Saturday, arriving on my doorstep on Tuesday afternoon.


My coworker and fellow beek, Oz, came over to lend a hand, as neither of us had installed a package before.

It's a very straightforward, well-documented process, but neither of us was prepared for the number of bees that took flight. I quickly went from t-shirt and veil to "full monty" suit - getting tagged 3 times before I got changed. You can see all the airborne girls in these two shots.


Once suited up, everything went smoothly. Both queens were alive and well. I installed one and Oz took the second. We were done in less than an hour.

After a cold beer and dinner, I went back out to check on things and found everyone had gone inside for the night.