- Now, here's what a package is.
It's usually a box, a screen on it,
it varies somewhat from place to place,
and company to company.
It usually has a can of syrup,
that they've been feeding the bees with.
It usually has a queen cage in here,
and the queen cage can vary.
In the United States typically
I see one of three kinds of queen cages,
I know what this one's going to be
by the plastic I see here,
this'll be an AZBZ I'm pretty sure, or JZBZ.
It'll be a plastic cage with a queen in it,
and maybe some attendants, maybe not.
If you get a package,
like from Georgia in the southern United States
it usually has a Benton three-hole cage
which is made out of wood,
it's kind of big, has candy on one end,
it's too fat to fit in all your frames
if you put it between the frames.
This one will fit between the frames, that one won't.
If you get them from California,
they're usually a little, much smaller wooden cage
that has no candy in, only has a cork in one end.
The Benton three-hole has a cork in both ends,
one end has candy, one end doesn't.
Now we're gonna come to some of what would vary
depending on where you are, because where you are
has a lot to do with what you would do.
When I get packages in the spring,
it's somewhere between early April and late April
in my part of the world, and it can freeze at night,
and so I don't dare leave the queen on the bottom
because the bees may all cluster up here
and the queen will get stuck down here, and she may die,
because it'll be zero degrees Centigrade,
32 degrees Fahrenheit possibly that night,
and then she'll just, you know, she'll just freeze to death.
So, I don't dare do that.
But, I also don't dare hang her in between the frames
because I'm doing foundationless
and if I hang her between the frames,
they almost always build that first comb
hanging off of that cage,
and if they build one bad comb
that leads to another bad comb and another bad comb,
and I don't want that.
So, I usually direct release her, I just let her go.
Now, that works better
when you're just doing one hive in your backyard,
but if you got five or six,
it gets more and more likely that they'll move next door,
because they like that queen better,
you have other complicated issues.
But, since we're in Australia,
and since I'm pretty sure it's not going to freeze tonight,
I'm pretty sure it's not even gonna get close,
we'll put the queen probably on the bottom
with the candy open so that the bees can chew the candy
out of the cage to release the queen,
and that way they'll be stuck here for a couple days,
they'll start building some comb,
they'll get settled in and then by the time she gets out
they're much more likely to stay.
I wouldn't do that where I am
just because the likelihood of them leaving
isn't really that much more when I direct release her,
but, it is real likely they'll mess up the comb
if I hang the cage,
and I have to hang the cage to have her up in the cluster,
otherwise, if put her down on the bottom
she may not survive, that make sense?
So, that's what we're gonna do today,
is we're gonna put the cage on the bottom, and,
and assume that since it's nice and warm,
the bees will go down there and take care of her,
she'll be fine.
They wouldn't all cluster up there where I am
and not take care of her except for the cold,
they cluster like that because of the cold,
they don't have a lot of choice,
they don't want to get too cold.
So, I'm gonna get the queen out first
so we have something, we can work with her
and decide what we want to do with her.
This is the can,
you may need a pair of pliers or a hive tool or something
to get the rim up where you can get a hold of it.
Sometimes they're wedged in, they're kind of tight,
sometimes they're not,
sometimes there's comb hanging from it,
all those are possibilities.
It looks like this one, they've got a hole in it,
and screen wire in there for the bees to come in the side.
The ones in the US usually have holes in the bottom,
or they have, sometimes they have a round hole
punched with a rubber grommet and a piece of cloth in that,
so that they're eating it from the bottom.
This one you can see they're coming out of this,
so they've been coming in the side here
crawling down into the can.
So this is a different system than I'm used to seeing,
but, it's the same concept,
it's a can full of syrup for them to live on,
I'm not sure how they built the ladder to get down in there.
Now that I take this out, of course,
the bees are coming out.
(bees buzzing)
I'm not really trying to let them out just yet,
I'm not trying not to let them out just yet,
I'm just trying to get the queen.
I'm not having much luck getting in there.
It's hard to get a hold of.
OK here's my queen.
I'll just set this can back in here.
Here this is a queen cage, this kind of a queen cage,
I'm gently trying not to squish any bees here.
This kind of a queen cage has this plastic cap on it,
so, the candy, if there is some, will be behind that cap,
and it looks like there is some,
so, I'm gonna take this cap off,
and you should be able to see that there's candy in there.
So, there's a number of theories on what to do here,
it really isn't that critical one way or another,
you could poke a hole in the candy,
what that will accomplish
is they'll chew through it quicker.
I don't mind if it takes them a couple of days,
if you come back in three or four days
and they haven't chewed through it, just let her go.
But, meanwhile it'll keep them here
and they'll start building some comb
and they'll get a little more established that this is home.
If I have her confined, they can't really leave very easily.
They could move next door to another queen,
but they, but other than that
they're not going to abscond without a queen,
so they're not gonna fly off and leave.
So, I'm gonna just set this on the bottom.
There's no attendants in here
but there's plenty of bees trying to take care of her
and they'll do fine taking care of her.
So I'm going to set it on the bottom board in here.
(bees buzzing)
Now, I wouldn't do that in Nebraska in April,
but I do that here, now, does that make sense?
OK, so I got a box full of bees here,
now we're really gonna open Pandora's box.
There's a number of ways I could do this,
I can just take the can out and dump them through the hole,
and that doesn't work too bad.
If you want to reuse the cage, that's what I'd do.
If you don't really care about reusing the cage
you can just cut the screen loose,
and peel it open and then dump the bees out,
and that works fine if you don't care about ever reusing it,
that's probably the simplest.
If you want to save this later to put some bees in
then I would just shake them out, it's not that hard.
If you do shake them out,
basically you just turn it upside down,
hit it good to knock them loose and then just pour them out
like you're pouring anything out of a jug or whatever
that's not quite liquid, you know,
you shake it a little to get it to pour out,
knock them loose again, shake it to pour them out,
kind of like pouring pancake batter, but,
but, since we're probably not going to reuse this,
I'll just cut the screen, does that sound like a plan?
So I'll pull this can out just to get it out of the way,
so we're not jostling bees around and drowning them.
(bees buzzing)
Now I'll reiterate what I already did,
I took some frames out here so I've got some room, right?
So I only got four frames in here,
and I've got an empty space in the middle.
I got a knife.
So, I'm just gonna cut this screen open.
(screen wire tearing)
And I don't want them all getting out here,
I want them really to go in there,
so I'm probably gonna move this over here about now.
(bees buzzing)
This is not the way I usually do it
because I usually save the boxes.
This is an odd-sized box, I'm used to shorter boxes,
so I'm not sure what I think about this, but.
There's two reasons,
there's one main reason to get a little bit more
violent, I guess is the word, I don't know,
a little less gentle with bees
and that's when you're trying to get them off of something
is the number one reason.
Now they built some comb in here, it's so soft though,
I don't think it's worth me trying to do anything with it,
so I'm just gonna shake them off and put it out here.
If you want to get bees off of something
gentle is not the way to do it,
but almost all the rest of the time
when you're doing bees you want to be gentle.
When you want to get bees off of something,
it really works better just to do it, surprise them,
you know, hit it sudden and hard.
So, I'm gonna knock them out of this box.
(box banging)
(bees buzzing)
OK, now there's still some bees in here,
I'm not going to worry about them
I'm just going to set it out here in front,
because the queen's not in there,
the queen's in here and most of the bees are in here
so they'll just move in here.
So I'll put the rest of the frames in,
and of course, you know, you want to always be gentle,
you're gonna, if you're gonna keep bees
you're probably gonna squish some of them once in a while,
but, the object of the game is to not squish them,
so, set things down gently
and at least the smart ones can get out of the way,
and the dumb ones I can't do much for.
(staff laugh)
But, the smart ones, they'll move over.
OK the next thing is,
you'll probably find somebody who disagrees with me
because I found some,
I found people that will disagree with me,
but, you want to put these frames tightly in the middle.
In reality all the standard frames
are actually 1/8 of an inch too wide,
if I could I'd put them 1/8 of an inch closer together,
and I can't, so I want them as tight as I can get them
because that's closer to the natural spacing of brood.
If I space them too wide,
they may decide to build some comb out in the middle
because they don't like that you spaced them too wide.
You know, you got a space of an inch,
at 38 millimeters when it ought to be 32 really,
and these are 35.
The wider I space it the more likely they'll decide
to build some wild comb that's not on the frame.
So I want them tight in the middle.
So, that set space is on the outsides,
and when I need to work it,
that means I can move one over a little bit to get them out,
does that make sense?
So now that I got them in here I'll put the lid on.
We wouldn't have a brush, would we?
Yeah, thanks.
You really don't have to buy a bee brush,
a good feather from a turkey
or, any big bird works really well,
but a brush works fine too.
But, if you've got big birds around,
I think the feather actually works better.
But, I'm gonna brush these off the edge
because I don't want to squish them.
Now when you're trying to move bees,
you're better to kind of flick them a little bit
than you are to go gently, because when you go gently
you just kind of push them and squish them,
and they hang on tighter and then they just get mad.
So, you're better off to do little flicks like this
than you are to do this, does that make sense?
So we're gonna put that little brick on.
If there's a flow on, which I think there is here,
I wouldn't bother to feed them, I'd just let them forage.
It's what they naturally do, and they do it pretty well,
I don't see much point, but you could.
In April in where I live there may not be anything blooming,
and I may have to feed them.
And if I have to I feed them but,
but if there's something blooming, I usually don't.
Does that make sense?
And there we are.
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