5-19-19 The bees arrived on May 6. I installed them, fed them and left them alone for a week. There were hardly any that had died in shipping and I was thankful for such a strong bunch since we had freezing rain and snow for almost three days after the day they arrived. I know that we’re supposed to keep ourselves a little detached in case our hive collapses and dies, but I worried about my new little family for three days straight. On day four, the sun came out and I nervously stood by the beehive for quite some time. Bees were busily coming and going from the hive. I had even more reason to be thankful. At one week since installation, I did a full hive check for health and was happy to find they had already built comb on most of the frames, cleared out the dead bees that had fallen to the bottom during installation, showed no signs of mites or illness, and there was honey. Beautiful, golden honey. Since I’m not that experienced in finding the queen among thousands, I didn’t see her immediately. So I took photos of both sides of each frame and loaded them into my computer to check for her. I think that I saw her on a photo that looked like a few cells had been capped. Of course, the photo was a little blurry so I’m not absolutely sure, I’m about 95% sure though and that’s good enough for me at this point. It’s snowing and blowing again today and I have a lot more confidence that the bees will be just fine.
I was so happy when I pulled the first frame and it looked like this!
