How to Install a Package of Bees

today we're going to take a look at how to install a package of bees package bees are one of several ways of purchasing bees these can also be purchased as a nuke or even as an established colony or you can catch a swarm whether you trap it or get a call that there's a swarm to be gathered so first let's talk about what a package of bees is this is obviously a wood box with screen on both sides for ventilation inside here as we'll see in a second there's a underneath this piece of wood here there is a opening with a can hanging down that has some sugar water to feed these bees while in transit and stored in here and there's a queen in a cage as well these bees were made by shaking bees from other colonies into this package and then adding the queen in her cage into the into the package these bees could come from multiple different colonies we don't even know the age of these bees this is one drawback of of packages that we get this assortment of bees put in with a queen they're unfamiliar with and that's why nukes actually offer a big advantage over packages but we're going to look at installing a package today and one thing you can see is that we already have a layer of dead bees on the bottom i just picked this up this morning this one didn't get shipped which is one advantage of packages you can ship these but if you see there is on this side a layer of dead bees this is going to happen remember the lifespan of a bee is short so in the few days that they've been in this package transported eventually getting to me the lifespan of those bees has ended now you don't want a thick layer of dead bees on the bottom for obvious reasons if shipped more bees will die so it's best if you could pick up the package shipping is the last resort but it is an option with package b's now before we go further with opening up our package we're going to talk about how we got our hive ready for this package another advantage of packages is that you can install them in different types of equipment nukes typically come with deep frames whereas a package can be put into mediums if you're gonna do all mediums even top bar hives but today we have a 10 frame langstroth hive we have a screened bottom board however we have put in a closer we want this community to be as welcoming as possible so we want it to be dark we have all our frames 10 frames we don't want to leave any openings we will take some out when we put the package in and we want to reduce the entrance to reduce the number that fly immediately and also to protect the colony because we're going to be feeding them we have our outer cover here that will go on top we have our inner cover once we put the package in we can close them up that way we'll put our our sugar water up here and then some extra boxes over to enclose it we'll talk about how we're going to feed them in a minute a package like this typically wouldn't be very aggressive if they've been shipped through the mail or mishandled which you don't know they could be especially if you're a newbie you want to have confidence handling your bees so wear your bee suit you can even wear your gloves and while i have no intention of smoking these bees at all i have my smoker ready because it's very difficult if you get in a situation anytime you're working your hives where you need your smoker quickly it's really hard to light it under those conditions so having it ready even if you don't expect to use it is always a good way to be prepared i'm going to go ahead and take out the sugar water and the queen and we'll show how to attach her to a frame inside the colony it's a hot day today so i'm glad to have a cool ventilated comfort prosuit you won't need a hive tool for moving the frames because they're not propolized together or anything but you will need a hive tool to remove this this in this case it's stapled shut this piece of wood on top of this package so okay and we do have some bees getting out so what we're going to do is before they all start getting out we need to get that can out and the bees are all around that can so we need to get them down i'm going to actually turn this over because these staples are not letting it lay flat we want to get those bees off that can so we can lift that can up also before we put them into the colony and right now we'll show you we have a spray bottle just a cheap cheap spray bottle with some of our one-to-one sugar water so there's two things we can do with this one is i'm using plastic foundation here and a lot of people like to just give it a mist they're going to eat this up real fast anyways and they need the sugar water so it won't hurt anything but also a lot of people like to do that to get the bees and encourage them to draw out comb on these plastic foundations you can also add an extra layer of wax these are pretty well waxed and i haven't had problems with these though so what we're going to do is we're going to give them a thump on the ground here just to get them down and then we'll give them a little spray we don't want to soak the bees by any means but just a little mist to get them to start grooming each other so here we go i have this on a real fine mist instead of a stream i'll give one more little thump then we'll take this can out but we're gonna keep this cover handy and you're probably going to get some bees out that's okay some bees might be on the can this can's almost empty we will save this just small couple small holes we'll save this because we might as well feed the sugar water to the bees now we'll remove our queen there's a small piece of foil here keeping her from falling in but allowing us to just lift her up i'll turn that we're not ready for our beast to come out yet we'll take a look at our queen there's our queen she's a russian hybrid and she is marked she's in there with these other bees they're attendants they help feed her take care of her while she's in there and they are going to have to help each their way out through this queen candy to get released so it's a delayed release you also can see if you look closely there are some dead bees in there as well they are just attendants that have died and that's okay but if we put this queen downward those dead bees could get in the way of her release so we want to put her sideways or up and down we're going to put her sideways so that they can eat out the bees from the outside can eat in and release her now they can't eat through this cork so this cork is to ensure that they don't get through this candy too early and release her into the package so that's like an insurance so we're going to take out that cork and let them eat the candy and release her now this side has a cork as well if you see you have to make sure you release the right end if you release the end that has no candy she'll come out right away that could be very bad so we want a delayed release so we're going to remove this cork let them eat their way through that queen candy and get released i'm going to set this package aside without letting it tip we're going to need a few frames out for actually dumping the bees and a frame to put our queen on so i have a couple row bands here that are fragile so one broke let's see if we get the other one to the middle of the frame that bee is trying to harm the queen there and we have to remember to release that cork probably more precise job than a hive tool but it'll work that queen candy is still covering the entrance for now there we go of course you want the screen side out and so that there's no chance of us bothering the queen here when we dump our bees in we're gonna actually put her there move this frame over so she's still centrally located but we're gonna dump our bees here and put our frames back in and they will quickly move to where that queen is so we've removed three frames we have our queen attached sideways so that the dead attendants won't block her escape we now are going to spray our bees a little more knock them down and get ready to shake them in actually before we do that we'll talk about a separate method you can use that doesn't revolve you shaking the bees in and that would be to simply take this whole package put it into your hive not ready for them yet cover it up and leave it put your inner cover out of cover and release them and let them make their own way out of that package that would be the no shake method pretty easy to do however you do need to come back and make sure that they have moved out of the package in a day or so and haven't started drawing comb inside of there you can get yourself a mess if they decide hey we'll just stay here build our colony and that can happen so you do want to check on them we're going to go ahead however and do the shake method that's the most traditional way i feel like it's a little bit of a rite of passage to shake your package your first package of bees into your into your hive so we want to make sure we have everything ready because it'll go quickly once we start so we have three frames out that's enough room to dump the bees right in there we have our inner cover get our hive tool right there in case we need it i would do this on the ground but so that you can see i'll do it right here and we'll give a little spray first just a little not a drenching we're going to shake them down another little spritz of sugar water and then we'll dump them in we do have that layer of dead bees on the bottom they're going to get dumped in they will have to drag those out but that's okay there will be bees left we'll just put that by the front entrance and they'll find their way in you don't want to wait and try to get every last bee out of the package while the other bees could be flying up in the air so get the majority put the inner cover on put the package in front and let them make their way we're going to shake them just to knock them down give them another little spritz first thing they're going to do now when they go in is going to start grooming each other and that'll keep them busy again we're going to dump them in right there so here we go we're going to do a little side to side now if you have enough bees on the top that you want you can put your inner cover on upside down we're going to move this package right by the entrance now we have to carefully lower our additional frames back in there's a lot of bees on the sides you got to do this carefully there we go and we'll push them tight now we're ready to feed these bees you really want to feed a new package i'm not a strong proponent of feeding colonies but new packages are the exception i really want to feed these bees so this is an entrance feeder or boardman feeder it has my lid with holes this can go right in the entrance but you don't want to do that these can really cause a problem with robbing especially a wheat colony like a brand new installed package so what we're going to do instead is we're going to put it right up here or we actually have gotten this double double jar holder from a friend we're going to try this out so we'll put this here and put two jars up there another option is a frame feeder this actually takes the place of this one takes place of two frames fill it up with sugar water this can hold quite a lot one and a half gallons and that can be left in the colony the advantage of that is you don't need the extra equipment that we're going to have to cover up these jars we'll be back in just a couple of days to check on these bees see if the queen has been released and also check on how much of this sugar water they've consumed the can here we're just going to lean this in here as well like so now to cover this up we have a couple empty medium boxes here we could have a deep but i don't have one handy then we get our outer cover on top and now we have successfully hived a package of bees thank you for watching and stay around for the next video where we'll show you how to install a nuke and then we're going to do a side by side comparison week by week how these two colonies develop so subscribe follow along and check out the next video

Channel: Beekeeping University

Views: 22,797

Rating: 4.858407 out of 5

Keywords: Bee package, Package bees, package installation, how to install a package, adding a package to a hive, hive a package of bees, how to shake a package, honeybee install, nonshaking package installation, no shake package installation, easiest way to install bees, Beekeeping, install 3lb package, Package vs nuc, nuc vs package, Beekeeping 101, beekeeping basics, beginner beekeeping, become a beekeeper, beekeeping, beekeeper, how to keep bees, how to install a bee package

Id: IdDd6fwvQ-g

Length: 17min 38sec (1058 seconds)

Published: Tue May 12 2020