I’ll Have Three Boxes Of Bees Please!
On Saturday morning Brian and I picked up three new packages of bees from a local bee supplier. Every year he drives down in a truck to Georgia and watches as the bee packages are made, then loads them up one by one into a trailer and drives hundreds of them back here to deliver to local beekeepers. My new bees came from packages that were put together on Thursday morning. The girls spent all day Friday driving back to Massachusetts. By the time they came to me the bees had been in the boxes for two days.
The bees were being well taken care of on the trailer and had plenty of ventilation.
A few of the bees escaped the boxes and were lost. They landed on the outside of the packages, trying to hitchhike a ride home, all the while looking for a way to get inside. Both the package bees and hitchhiking bees are very confused. They have been displaced from their hive and everything they have known has drastically changed.
First, the bees are shaken off the frames from their hive and down a funnel into a box. Then a new queen they don’t know is put into a cage and placed inside the package with them. There may be sister bees from other hives in there as well so the package can reach the three pound weight of bees threshold. Finally, these artificial swarms are driven many states away to a new climate and rehived. It is a very confusing time for the bees.
The three packages of bees are now ready to come home with us.
Pictures just can’t capture the aliveness and gentle buzzing of all those bees inside that box so I’ve included a video below.
Now all the girls need is a brand new home.