Two weeks

The Monday after I installed the packages was amazingly hot. About 80 degrees in April!

One of the hives was acting strangely. It looked suspiciously like a swarm on the front of the hive. A clump of bees with many more zooming around the yard.

I had realized the day before that I had put the hive-top feeder on wrong and fixed it, but I think the queen was not happy with her accommodations. I wasn't supposed to open the hive and look until Tuesday, and then I was supposed to remove the queen cages so the only thing I could think to do was spray some sugar syrup on the clump of bees and hope that they would go back into the hive. I was hoping they were just warm, and the spray would cool things down.

So the next day I opened up one hive--the one with the bucket feeder--and removed the queen cage. There were about 6 bees inside the cage starting to draw out comb, but no queen. There were lots of bees spread out over about 4 frames so things looked good in that hive. The other hive--the one with the hive-top feeder--also had an empty queen cage, and there were bees building burr comb on the bottom of the queen cage. Again I didn't see a queen, but there were also a lot fewer bees and they seemed to be clumped on 2 frames. This did not look good. I had a bad feeling about that hive, but I was supposed to wait until Saturday to go messing about in the hive so I worked on my patience.

Saturday and Sunday it was supposed to rain, and I was catching a plane for a business trip early Monday morning so I opened up the hives on Friday to see how things looked. Again the hive with the bucket feeder looked good, but the hive with the big fancy hive-top feeder looked poorly so I grabbed a plastic bucket that my horses' supplements came in, cut a hole in the top, got out my glue gun and glued a piece of screen across the hole. Voila! A second bucket feeder. I put that on the the second hive, crossed my fingers, and left town for a week.

Saturday and Sunday after I got back were both very windy days. Not good weather for messing with the hives. I took a quick peek anyway, and thought I saw a queen in the "happy" hive.

Monday, I took another look, and this time I saw what I think is a queen in the not so happy hive. Maybe the problems with the feeder just set that hive back some, or maybe she's not such a great queen; I'm not sure which it is yet, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

The happy hive has about 6-7 frames going, but the other has about half that many. There is something capped in the happy hive. I'm not sure if it's honey or brood yet. I fed the Honey B Healthy supplement in the syrup, and everything in the hive appears to be bright yellow. There are also clearly some pollen cells, but I guess I'll just have to watch the capped cells and see what if anything comes out. The not so happy hive has some things capped as well, but a lot less. Patience!

First step

I picked up 2 packages of bees yesterday at Bees N Me and installed them in my hives. Yay!
I have 2 different hive-top feeders: one is the usual bucket feeder and the other is a fancy one from BeeCommerce. I installed the fancy one wrong and drowned some bees before correcting my mistake. No inner cover on top of the feeder. The top is supposed to be inaccessible, and the screen is supposed to prevent drowning. Checking later I found that even with the screen I had a few drowned bees. I guess simple is safer when it comes to feeders.
Now I have to wait until Tuesday before checking to see if the queen is out of her box in each hive. There are small clouds of bees in front of each hive. The temperature is above 70 degrees which is amazing for April, and I'm hoping the clouds of bees are normal. They don't seem to be fighting or anything, and the buzzing doesn't sound angry so I'm going to assume it's all good.
Here's what it looks like today.