New Italian Honeybee Hive Installed

I arrived at Jones Bee early in the morning to pick up the first of three new colonies of bees. This morning's bees are Italian Goldens. The Italians were introduced to the United States in 1853 (cite), are good producers, and are fairly docile.

Hiving the bees was straightforward. I shook the bees to the bottom of the shipping container by firmly striking the bottom of the container to the ground. I lightly sprayed down the bees with sugar water to reduce the number of bees in the air once the shipping box was opened. I removed the #6 can that provides food to the bees during transit. I removed the queen cage, then replaced the feed can.

After brushing the attendant bees from the queen cage, I exchanged the cork stopper for a mini-marshmallow. The marshmallow will delay the queen's release into the hive by several days and increases the probability of the hive accepting her. I placed the queen cage between the fifth and sixth frames of the hive body, opened the shipping container again, and dumped the bees over the tops of the frames in the hive body.

I provided the new colony a boardman style feeder. I filled the quart mason jar with 1:1 sugar syrup. The bees have some comb and some honey from last year's colony, but they'll have to pull comb on all of the new frames in the hive. The exchange rate between wax and honey is 10:1. For every 10 units of honey the bees can produce from a food source, they can only produce 1 unit of wax (cite). The sugar syrup will help the girls to get the hive into full production.

After the bees have worked their way into the frames, I set the inner cover and the telescoping covers in place. I try to be very careful when I'm working with a hive. Though I'm aware that the colony in full production may have 40 thousand bees, I feel bad when I inadvertently kill the inevitable handful of bees while inspecting frames or closing up the hive. At the entrance to the hive, bees have taken up position to notify the stragglers in the air and clinging to the shipping container that home has been established. The bees at the entrance will fan and produce a hormone to call everyone in home (cite).

Photos

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Selected References:
Sammataro, Diana and Avitabile, Alphonse. The Beekeeper's Handbook, Third Edition. Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2006.