How are those bees doing, Guy?
My new hive arrived today. They look pretty good, much bigger than my old ones, and a little more docile I would say. The easy nature of these new bees might just be because it's still fairly cold by me, but they're definitely some big fat bees. My old ones were pure Russians and these new ones are Russian hybrids.
So for anyone that's interested, this is how they come:
I mist them with some water just because they're thirsty from their travels. I pried off the Masonite panel that covers the can of sugar syrup, as shown in the picture. Just to the left of the syrup can is the queen cage. Remove the queen with her attendants in the cage:
You can see the metal tab on the left side and the hole plugged with candy on the right. At each end is a little cork. I remove the cork on the candy side and poke a small hole in the candy with a finishing nail. They bees will slowly eat the candy to get to queenie, and by that time accept her as the queen. This is how I learned to do it, right or wrong... I dunno.
I take out the middle frame and hang the queen cage in there between two center frames. They always put that metal tab on the end to hang the queen cage by but I hate that. If one of the attendants dies then they fall and block the hole. I put some finish nails in the other end and suspend the cage by the nails with the candy facing up. Anyway, queen in... then I take the big cage with all the workers and take the syrup can out. Hold the big cage over the hive and give it a couple good whacks and the bees will pour into the hive like a liquid. Pretty fascinating.
Matt, this can take sugar off that grocery list of yours.
"Knowledge is power. Arm yourself."