The New Bees Are In
Yesterday I picked up three packages of bees from a guy in my bee club who schlepped a whole lot of packages up from an apiary in Georgia. I got three not two hives with queens because my one remaining live hive to examine the "live" hive for the queen who clearly hasn't been laying well and to "terminate" her. Yes , though I hated to think about it , I would have to kill her by squishing her.
My son Josh helped me hive the bees. The first two went smoothly and when we took down the third hive we didn't find any sign of a queen's activity: no eggs, no brood, nada. So I prononounced her dead, de facto, and installed the new queen, thus saving me the moral conflict of deliberately killing a beautiful creature. I put the old bees on top and the new bees with the new queen on the bottom separtated by a sheet of newspaper. This is so that they will slowly comingle odors and slowly eat away the barrier and mix. You don't want a sudden confrontation when addind new bees to an existing colony.
Anyhow, they all seem to be settling in nicely. They have old honey from last year's bees to sustain them while they lay in new stores and they have drawn comb to deposit their various things in (pollen, honey, brood, etc.) saving them the labor of making new wax. They are all set to start storing honey. So I am hopeful I will have some sort of crop this year. I'll keep you posted.