New addition to The Old Five Notch Farm!

Saturday we took a trip to Pickens, South Carolina to pick up our latest addition to the farm!

It was a beautiful day and the ride to the upstate of South Carolina was very nice.  Pickens sits in the foothills and the sight of the beginning of the rolling mountains was just wonderful.

We arrived at Bell Well Honey Farm around 11 am and spent a few moments looking around the Bell Well Natural Food Store before picking up our three pound package of bees and their queen!  We tucked our buzzing package in the back seat and proceeded to check out the town of Pickens.  We found several nice antique stores and did a some looking and a little buying too.  A quick lunch of Little Caesar's pizza in Easley, Farmer Man knows what I like!, and we headed for home.

When we returned home we place our English Garden Hive in the front yard and Scott installed the bees.  It was overcast and drizzling too....not the ideal weather to install bees in their new home.  Since the weather was so unfriendly Scott pulled the queen, safe in her little cage, and placed her between two frames in the waiting hive box.  He removed four frames from both hive boxes to make room to place the container inside the boxes.  Normally, you would just dump the bees into the hive and they would then clump around the queen.  Since the weather wasn't ideal, placing the whole container in the hive allowed the bees to stay warmer and crawl their way out and to their queen. They behaved themselves very well and settled in quite easily. 

Farmer man was concerned about getting the container out and replacing the frames so they could start drawing out comb on the foundation.  Sunday afternoon he donned the beekeepers suit, veil and gloves.  It was very possible they would be calm and easy to work since they had not established brood or honey stores yet, but rather be safe than stung! A little smoke to make the bees calm and a few minutes for them to relax before he opened the hive. The weather was once again cold and drizzling so he worked purposely to remove the container and replace the frames.

Farmer Man removed the top hive box with the copper roof intact. The queen is in the top box along with most of bees.

Removing the container the bees were packaged in

Shaking out any stragglers

Replacing the frames in the bottom box

You can see the cluster of bees on the top right of the box...just past his gloved hands

Carefully adding the frames back to the top box....bees on the top of the frames closest to Scott

 

The bees are are safely tucked in. He will pull the screen off the container and prop it up against the stand to allow any stragglers easy access to the entrance of the hive.

The queen in inside a wire cage with a few workers to tend to her. There is a "plug" of candy over the opening keeping her inside the cage.  The plug is there to keep her contained and allow the other bees time to accept her as their queen.  They will eat away at the candy both from the inside of the cage and from the outside releasing her.  We will have to check the hive again on Wednesday or Thursday to be sure she has been released and pull her empty cage.  We added a hive top feeder, the shallow box directly on top of the second hive box, to provide an instant food source for the bees.  They will need a lot of food to draw out all the honeycomb so we will make sure they have sugar water available for several weeks.

We are so excited to have this addition to the farm! We'll update as the hive begins to be productive.