The bees are about to arrive. We will be picking up 20 packages of bees on April 14th. It should be a lot of fun. I have spent the last two months building hives and now I am ready to focus on the bees. For those who are just getting started, now is the time you want to set up your hive. Pick a good sunny location. An ideal location would have the entrance facing South East so that the sun can wake the girls up early. A little afternoon shade isn't bad and some kind of shelter to protect them from the North wind in the winter is good too. If it were me I would lean towards too much sun vs. not enough. Set your hive on something so that it gets it off the ground and high enough to avoid vegetation blocking the entrance. You will want your site as level as you can get it. I then put a shim or two on the back so that it tilts slightly forward. This makes it so that if any water does get into the hive it will run out the entrance. Once you have your site located and prepared. I would put your hive in its place. You will start with the bottom board and then one box on top of that. You will want to put your feeder in, but I would not fill it up yet. If it is a division feeder, I like to remove 2 frames. I would wait to fill it on the day you get the bees, but good to have it all in place. You then will put the inner cover on and the top cover. Your hive is ready to go. You can put your entrance reducer on if you would like, you will want it on when you put the bees in.
Over the next two weeks you will want to make sure there is a water source for the bees. This can be a natural source or a man made one. You will want to make sure you have all your safety gear (suit, gloves, hive tool and smoker if you want). I would go to youtube and watch a few videos on how to install a package of bees. This will get you even more excited and when I show you on the 14th, it will look really familiar. The night before the bees arrive, it is a good idea to make up the sugar syrup. For spring feeding it is 2 parts water to 1 part sugar and I do it based on weight. In volume I think it is almost 1:1. You will want it room temperature when you feed it to your bees. On a new package of bees I like to feed them until they have the first two boxes filled up or until they don't take it any more. A lot of times there will be a natural nectar flow and the bees will prefer it over the sugar syrup. You are ready to become a beekeeper.
It is extremely good to read up on how to keep bees and youtube is a great resource as well. I will not be able to explain everything in the short time we will have on the 14th, but there are tons of resources and info that are available either in print or on the internet.
Beekeeping is a great hobby and you will love keeping bees!
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