Last week Darryl picked up two packages of Italian honey bees from Noble Apiaries of Dixon California. He was able to arrange to pick them up at the UPS distribution center by the Oakland Airport. Each package contained approximately 10,500 bees including a queen. He had previously ordered materials to build two bee hives and has been working on them for the past 3 months. So the day after the bees were picked up, he installed them into the two hives in our apple orchard.

Here are some pictures of the bees moving in.


Here are the two packages of bees sitting on top of a beehive. There are about 20,000 bees total in the two packages.


Darryl with the two packages of bees ready to install in their hives.


Here is the queen cage covered with attendants ready to be installed in
the hive. Hopefully over the next few days, the worker bees will be able to
chew through the candy plug on the cage and free the queen.


The queen cage has been placed between two frames of the hive. Just
to be safe, Darryl put a piece of wire through the cage so that it wouldn’t
fall to the bottom of the hive. The cage is surrounded by attendant bees.


The rest of the bees have been shaken onto the frames. The rest of the
frames are now being added. Finally, Darryl will put a top feeder and
sugar water (syrup) on top and cover the hive with it’s lid.


All done!  Now we will leave the bees alone for a week to get comfortable
in their new home.