Here’s where things got a little tricky. When the bees came in, the day before Easter, for some reason our people at The Hive couldn’t contact us. I saw it on Instagram and contacted them. That Monday I rushed up there, got the hive parts and bees. There was some confusion between what we thought we ordered and what Terry ordered, so we didn’t think we had a complete hive. e did, but there weren’t any honey supers like we expected, so they were very short hives. One had two medium supers (the hive boxes) and the other one deep super.
Medium super with frames included.
Once that was figured out we realized we had boxes of frames with no foundation, which is what goes in the supers for the bees to build comb for honey, pollen, and brood (baby bees).
Medium frame with honeycomb foundation.
We needed to get the bees into their hives as soon as possible so they wouldn’t get cranky or run out of food. We got one hive painted Monday night and installed the next morning at 6:30 a.m. The orange hive has the deep super, so we were able to remove a few frames and place the bee box in there once we removed the queen and got her situated.
The queen is in a little box called the queen cage, attached to the inside of the bee package made of wood, screen, and a tin can for feeding. We left the package in there overnight so the bees could come out on their own.
Bethany removing the queen cage from the bee package.
Writer at The Mudroom
Tammy writes about unabridged life, fragmented faith, and investing in the mess. She is founder and curator of The Mudroom, a collaborative blog encouraging women to speak truth, love hard, and enter in with each other and co-founder of Deeply Rooted, a biannual worship and teaching gathering for women. Tammy is a member of Redbud Writers Guild, writing blog posts, personal essays, flash memoir, poetry, and even preaches sometimes. She lives in an intentional Christian community in Chicago with her husband, Mike and daughter, Phoenix. She has a poem included in the recently published book Everbloom: Stories of Deeply Rooted and Transformed Lives.
Latest posts by Tammy Perlmutter (see all)
- Meet Tammy Perlmutter of Uptown Apiary - January 16, 2018
- The Burrs and the Bees - June 7, 2017
- First Looks at the Hives! - May 7, 2017