Currently listening: Lecherous Gaze- Animal Brain

Saturday (April 5, 2015) I got to watch bee’s go into a new home. A Kenya (top-bar horizontal hive) and a Warre  Langstroth hive :], Italian honey-bee’s in one and European in the other.

Before:

“After” (Since the bee’s were still adjusting to their new home, I wouldn’t quite refer to it as after until they have fully moved in):

note the bee’s congregating at the entrance/exit in the lower left of the container

This is the container the bee’s were brought to us in.  These are the Italian bee’s (I believe):

“But first let me get a shot for Instagram” – Harper

Harper took the queen bee from the larger container, she is separated in her own small box (pictured below).

He popped the cork off her box and inserted wax/honey from a previous hive into her enclosure. This was done for the bee’s to eat off/eat their way into the queen (“within a couple days time”)- to prevent them from swarming off elsewhere. Using a metal clasp attached to her enclosure, he inserted the queen onto one of the horizontal slates:

Then he took out the can of sugar-water (not pictured: but you are able to see the metal top of it two pictures above, and some six pictures later) and placed the worker bees with their queen into their new home:

Now they are all (or mostly) out of the container, and it’s time to place the remainder of the bars to close off that section of the hive.  These bars were previously lined with wax to promote natural “U” shape comb development.

Here the guys are opening the second batch of bee’s, containing the European lot (or was it the Italian bee’s?).  These pictures show the container of sugar-water used for feeding the bee’s during shipment.  The European honey-bee’s were placed into a Langstroth hive.

Partly during this process Harper got stung just under the right eye. I didn’t see who(whom?) to credit, but someone was brilliant and scraped it off with a City of Eugene business-card:

This group seems to be settling in just nicely:

Here is an adorable picture of Cheyenne with a bee on her hat:

And that concludes another amazing Saturday adventure at the UO Urban Farm. If you see information on here that is incorrect, I welcome and value your input and constructive criticism.

Later Days

-Kat B!