# first successful install



## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

I picked up our bees from the post office today. there were a good amount of dead/drowned bees in there. I was a bit worried. The install could not have gone smoother. I ended up just dumping them in. I hung around for several hours and I checked on them through the window multiple times and I think they are doing good. As soon as it started getting dark about 3 hours after install they all seemed to be coming home, at least they were only going in and none were coming out. I hung the queen between bar 2 and 3. I am not sure when I should try to pull her cage out. They formed up pretty tight around her.


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## WBVC (Apr 25, 2013)

Such fun and anticipation...like kids they mostly manage despite us. What are the white things acting as bee rafts in the syrup?


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

They are little plastic beads.


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## T0ADMAN (Aug 5, 2011)

I'm jealous of your window. I wish I had had time to build a window into my hives. I guess there's always next time. 

Everything looks good for your new hive. Enjoy.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

I would get cage out ASAP. They will build comb around it and booger it up.


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

Alright, I will pull it tonight when I get home.


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

Alright I went straight home and opened up the hive and pulled the queen cage out. At first I saw the candy still in there and got worried but they had eaten a tunnel through so the queen was gone. They had built a decent amount of comb on it in less than 24 hours after install so I am super glad I did not wait for 3 or 4 days like some people have. I would have had a huge mess on my hands. I dropped the cage towards the back of the bee area next to the follower board. This morning it was cool and no one was left on it so I snuck in the back way and grabbed it. Here are my pictures from last night.


















They were also starting to festoon(?) around the sugar syrup so I pulled the sled back a bit and got it out of reach. I may move that to the other side of the follower board tomorrow. They have taken about an inch out of my quart jar. I am not sure they really even need it.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Weird, I just left a queen cage hanging for four days and they didn't build a single speck of comb on/near it. They had built comb on the bar next to it down even with it, but zero attachment.


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## HappyBeeing (Apr 6, 2013)

My queen cage last year was wood and looked like yours after just 2 days. This year's cage was plastic and they didn't build on it just stared work on the 2 bars before it. Made me wonder if they don't like plastic(couldn't blame them).


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## Matt903 (Apr 8, 2013)

I should have listened to Mike Bush on hanging the queen cage! Left mine in for a few days a couple of seasons ago, and what a mess!


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## Silverbackotter (Feb 23, 2013)

good idea on the feeder


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

Matt903 said:


> I should have listened to Mike Bush on hanging the queen cage! Left mine in for a few days a couple of seasons ago, and what a mess!


I also should have listened. My thinking was is I hang the queen I risk messed up comb. If I direct release I risk loosing a queen. The risk of messed up comb looked better than dealing with no queen. I should have known it was good though. When I took the cage out of the package it was completely surrounded by bees. 



Silverbackotter said:


> good idea on the feeder


Thanks. Here is another shot of the sled. It has a cotton string attached so I can move it a bit if the bees get too "attached" to it. The string goes under the follower board so there is minimal disturbance when I do it. I put a chamfer on the bottom edge so it will slide easy.


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

After seeing the bit of comb that the bees made Tuesday I expected to see even more progress on Wednesday. When I went to check, around 5pm almost all the bees were still in the hive. There were a few coming and going and they were are clustered in the same place that they were that morning. The temperature was in the mid 70's and it was a bit breezy. There was no visible progress. Shouldn't they be super busy on a day like that? They have gone through another inch of syrup.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

onesojourner said:


> After seeing the bit of comb that the bees made Tuesday I expected to see even more progress on Wednesday. When I went to check, around 5pm almost all the bees were still in the hive. There were a few coming and going and they were are clustered in the same place that they were that morning. The temperature was in the mid 70's and it was a bit breezy. There was no visible progress. Shouldn't they be super busy on a day like that? They have gone through another inch of syrup.


I haven't checked for a couple of days, but I have not been able to see any progress through my window at all. Other than the cluster looking a bit closer to the window then before. It's amazing how well the comb is hidden under a pile of bees. Have you seen any eggs yet or pulled frames out at all? Have they been bringing in pollen?

Our bees have been flying pretty well until 6-6:30 in the evening bringing in pollen. And that's on days with highs of 55-60 and pretty good wind (seems to have been 15-25 mph almost every day). On the day it was 80 and relatively calm there was a constant stream of bees leaving on a line and coming back with baskets of pollen. They've been doing this since the day after we installed their queen. Prior to that it didn't matter if it was 75 and sunny... they were just an unmoving cluster in the hive.


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

I have not lifted any bars for 36 hours. I watched them for a few minutes yesterday and I didn't not notice any pollen coming in. Mine seemed an awful lot like an unmoving cluster yesterday.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

onesojourner said:


> I have not lifted any bars for 36 hours. I watched them for a few minutes yesterday and I didn't not notice any pollen coming in. Mine seemed an awful lot like an unmoving cluster yesterday.


Take the following with a grain of salt...

If it is nice today where you are, my suggestion would be to watch for pollen coming in for more than a few minutes. I've noticed that I can watch for several minutes and it seems like all the bees coming in do not have pollen. Then suddenly every single bee will have baskets full, then back to empty for awhile. If you still don't see pollen I would open the hive and look at the combs they have built in search of eggs, this will also give you a much better idea of how much progress they have or haven't made since you last looked. It's still early on after the install, but I think you should expect to find comb, pollen, and some syrup/nectar in the comb. If you happen to see the queen when you're in there great, but I don't get hanged up on finding her. If they are still building comb they are probably OK. Looking back on the hive's behavior before getting them "queenright", they seemed sad/mopey. The cluster was tight, but the bees that weren't in the cluster were just kind of hanging out around the feeders and maybe sitting on the floor of the hive. After queen installed, comb was drawn RAPIDLY and pollen was being brought in the next morning about 12-14 hours after hanging the queen in her cage. The comb we saw Sunday had been at least tripled in size by Tuesday. I will look in the window tonight and I expect to see evidence of the first two combs fully drawn (they were very close to being so on Tuesday). I'd also expect the third comb they started to be nearly fully drawn and for them to have started a fourth and maybe a fifth. The amount of syrup they have been drinking has gone up probably fivefold literally overnight. Before queen, they were drinking maybe 5-6 ounces over the course of 2-3 days. They are taking 24+ ounces in a 48 hour period.

Of course this is coming from someone who had several people tell me I wasn't being patient enough with them when they'd been installed a week with no comb, no pollen coming in, and basically no flying (except to poop). You need to be patient, realistic with your expectations, but also have a bit of a sense of urgency with your package I think. If they were going like gangbusters and suddenly the brakes have been slammed on and you don't even see bees flying I would be concerned. Another thing that my brother and I noticed, is that the couple of times we opened them up before they had a queen. The bees wouldn't fly much, but as soon as the hive was cracked they would crawl up in decent number and start Nasonoving almost immediately. I don't know if that's in an attempt to "bring the queen home" or what, but it doesn't seem as evident now that they have a queen. I notice that later in the evening one bee will be there fanning her brains out at the entrance for a very long time, assuming to guide the last foragers in? But other than that, it seems like the bees in the hive are moving with purpose now and doing jobs vs. sitting.

I'm new with very little experience, but my dad and grandpa kept bees when I was growing up... so I know a little bit going into this and have an expectation of what a bee hive should look like on a given "good weather" day.


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

Alright, we had storms rolling through all day but there was about 10 minutes of dry right after work. There was about the same amount of action as yesterday. A steady stream of bees in and out but most of them were just clustered in the same space. They are taking about an inch of syrup a day. I will refill tomorrow. I did notice some pollen coming in. Bees were coming in about every 3 to 5 seconds and I would say pollen toting about 1 bee per minute. It is supposed to be warm and sunny tomorrow. I think I will pull out some bars around noon and see what they are up to under the mass.


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## shannonswyatt (May 7, 2012)

Hopefully they a drawing comb. You can't see it for some time, then all of the sudden it is there.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

onesojourner said:


> Alright, we had storms rolling through all day but there was about 10 minutes of dry right after work. There was about the same amount of action as yesterday. A steady stream of bees in and out but most of them were just clustered in the same space. They are taking about an inch of syrup a day. I will refill tomorrow. I did notice some pollen coming in. Bees were coming in about every 3 to 5 seconds and I would say pollen toting about 1 bee per minute. It is supposed to be warm and sunny tomorrow. I think I will pull out some bars around noon and see what they are up to under the mass.


Sounds promising. I'm excited to check our hive this afternoon and see how much comb they have now.


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## Bawbby (Mar 16, 2014)

20 hours after the install. 47 degrees out. Expected to reach 56 today.
They aren't using any sugar. My feeder is behind the follower so I heated it in a sink of hot water. I had 12-1 1/4" bars installed. I removed 5 and moved the follower up. They are clustered around the queen cage (I used marshmallow). Hopefully they won't be too pissed and abscond on me.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

When it's cold I always feed warm syrup. If the syrup is cold, I warm it up...


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## HappyBeeing (Apr 6, 2013)

shannonswyatt said:


> Hopefully they a drawing comb. You can't see it for some time, then all of the sudden it is there.


I agree. My new package,for my second and new hive/installed April 16, is clustered at the top of the first 4 bars and I haven't seen a thing when I looked except a ball of bees. I'm not worried because they've eaten--but a relatively small amount of syrup(a quart in a week over the rainy days).They are active flying when the sun hits them and it's warm enough.Last year my first package did the same thing but I read here it takes awhile for them to get started and for me that was true. They begin several bars under cluster cover up top  and don't make one full bar at a time. I haven't seen pollen coming in for mine either but if they are flying and I assume they are bringing in nectar or pollen when I'm not looking as also stated above. It helps that I went through this last year!


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

Alright all is well. I went in today and they have at least 3 half drawn combs. there may be more but I stopped when I saw the queen was alive and well. I didn't take the time to see if there were any eggs but I did notive pollen getting packed in. they went through about a pint of sugar syrup. They had created a traffic jam today in it and there were about 30 that were just about to drown. I scooped them out on the ground and they started cleaning themselves. I refilled and added some more beads.


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

Comb is finally solidly visible through the glass. We are in a Cold snap right now so they probably won't make much progress until the weekend. Our daytime highs are not going to make it out of the 50's today.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Good news!


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

Alright a couple of pictures from last night. The first 5 bars look about the same. They had really stalled out on building comb and now they are back at it. The new comb is all being added to the sides of the older comb. I am not sure why they built the bars 3/4 out then moved to the next bar back. Bar 6 is 3/4 built but empty. They have just started on bar 7. I added a bar between 3 and 4 and added one more bar at the back so they have 12 to work with. I am guessing that all this brood will be emerging in the next week.


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## estreya (Apr 20, 2014)

Gorgeous! Isn't it such a thrill?

In one of my two hives, the bees also built "less" comb on a greater number of bars. Maybe it's my short attention span hive!


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

Alright things are still going good in hive #1. They don't seem to build as fast as some of you but they are making progress. About a week ago I noticed them building comb with much larger holes than any of the other combs. I figured that was destined to hold honey. I went ahead and added spacers to make the bar 1.5" wide. They had also started on the next bar, it was only about a 2" piece of comb. I moved that between bar 4 and 5. Things seemed to slow down after that. The queen was still laying and after a few days I could see brood and capped brood through the window. I was kind of excited to have the chance to see brood crawl out. 

The larger comb is on the right.









Unfortunately I was not able to see any of the brood come out, the population of this hive has to have at least doubled, if not tripled. This is a weekish later.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I also should have listened. My thinking was is I hang the queen I risk messed up comb. If I direct release I risk loosing a queen.

You have a 99% chance they will mess up all the comb in the hive if you hang the queen cage and leave it too long. You have a 0% chance they will kill the queen if you direct release (unless there is a queen loose in which case it is irrelevant as you still have a queen). You have a 1% chance the queen will fly, in which case you have a 50% chance she will return... you have a 15-20% chance they will abandon the queen (caged or not) and move next door to a better queen because of the quality of the queens... you just have to play the odds...

Hanging the queen cage in a foundationless system "just to be safe", is not "safe"...


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

Michael Bush said:


> You have a 0% chance they will kill the queen if you direct release (unless there is a queen loose in which case it is irrelevant as you still have a queen). ...


Michael, how do you feel about direct release of a replacement queen in a hive that has been queenless for some time? The beek that I bought her from said he only has a 10% success rate in reintroducing a queen for a hive that has been queeless more than 5 days. Made me kind of nervous. I had her in a jelly jar in the hive for ~30 hrs and then directly released her. Looked 15 hrs later for eggs to steal to another hive and found that the nuc already had hatched their own queen so there were 2 of them running around the hive (neither one laying eggs). So the newly introduced queen got put back in the screened jam jar and introduced to 2 frames from another queenless hive. I'm hoping she lays it up with eggs before Sat, when I will have to put her in the main hive with all the queenless bees. Just trying to make sure they don't do her in.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Michael, how do you feel about direct release of a replacement queen in a hive that has been queenless for some time?

I never direct release a queen to a hive. A package is really just a swarm of sorts. A hive is a different animal entirely. The only direct introduction I ever do to a hive is a frame with the laying queen and her entourage and her brood into a hive that knows it's queenless.


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

How long do the bees stay in the hive before they go forage? We had a nice sunny day and most were still just festooning in the hive. They had completely built out the first inserted bar in the brood area so I went ahead and added one more bar. All the capped brood from post 26 were out. and now there is capped brood on the perimeter of all those combs.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>How long do the bees stay in the hive before they go forage? 

Sometimes they have to sit and think a while. The colony is making up it's mind what it plans to do. Sometimes they sit like this a while and then move to a different part of the hive and go to work. Sometimes they stay there but go to work... how long it takes them to make up their mind varies from colony to colony...


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

I hate to say it but it looks like this hive is dead. We had a nice sunny day in the 50's and I still did not see any movement. Peaking through the window, there were a couple of non moving bees on the some comb along with a rather large beetle. This seems odd considering it looked like this at the end of the summer:










We did have a pretty crazy first frost/hard freeze to get this winter rolling. Maybe they just didn't see it coming. 
I am looking into a replacement package now. I looked at beeweaver but the price with shipping is pretty crazy. I am looking are wolf creek also,This may be what these were (sold through a reseller) so I am a bit torn about going down the same road since they made through so little winter. Does any one else have any other suggestions?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

It is possible they are dead, but I would not write off a colony until it's a sunny day in the 60s or 70s and no one is flying. It's not dead until it's warm and dead. On a day in the 50's it may or may not get warm enough inside to get them flying. Sometimes the colonies that do the best are the ones that are the least active in the winter.


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

Well it is official, this hive is completely dead except for the beetles on moths that have moved in. It was in the 70's last weekend. The other hive was very active so I decided to see what was happening inside this one. I found no more than a handful of bees on 2 or 3 combs all frozen in place. Some bees were head first in the comb. And I found the queen, also dead. I pulled 2 more mostly full combs and took them over to the other hive. I pulled 2 for myself and then took about 5 partially full of pollen and honey and put it in the freezer. The next day I noticed activity. the other hive that is about 1000 yards away had found this one empty. The cleaned out all the honey that had dripped on the bottom and were finishing off all the honey that was left in the comb. It was crazy. It looked like a healthy active hive in the summer with all the bees coming and going. 

So, I have a replacement package coming in about a month and a half. What do I need to do to get this hive ready for the new residents? I brushed off the dead bees that were on the comb. There are a few still head first in the comb that won't come out easily.


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## msscha (Jan 4, 2014)

So sorry!


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

>> So, I have a replacement package coming in about a month and a half. What do I need to do to get this hive ready for the new residents? 

If you are not confident that _Mother Nature_'s freezer has/will do the job, you could put those frames in _your _freezer for a couple of days to destroy any remaining pest eggs.

As for the rest, the new bees that you install will take care of cleaning up the comb.


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## onesojourner (Jan 9, 2014)

well we are supposed to be a few degrees below 0 tomorrow, So that will probably do the job.


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