Installing Packaged Bees with Anne Frey, Part 2 (280)

Episode 280 – Installing Packaged Bees with Anne Frey, Part 2

Jim Tew:

Hey listeners, if you listened in last week, Ann and I went on and on. We had a nice time with various experiences about the package and queen world. in the springtime. Ann's still here with me. That's a good time for you to say hi, Ann. Hi Jim. We're gonna do part two. We'll try to see if we can ramble through more of it again. I had a good time last week. See if we can do it again. But I we want to continue talking on that subject. We had to cut it short because we don't really want to turn these things into long segments. We'd love rather have short conversations and leave 'em wanting more. About the length of a cup of coffee, would you say? Say Ann.

Anne Frey:

20 minutes, sure.

Jim Tew:

Yeah. Listeners, I'm Jim Tew. I'm here with Anne Frey. We come to you once a week here at Honey Bee Obscura where we just have a conversation about something to do with plain talk beekeeping.

Introduction:

Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges. Of managing honey bees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.

Jim Tew:

Yeah, but can't you get some strange phone calls, man, with people trying to tell you what's going on with their bees?

Anne Frey:

Oh my goodness. I don't work in the office and I rarely get the calls unless the office staff can't handle it, but I hear about once every two years here they have gotten a call from a customer who never hived their package. They just kept the bees in the package and they thought that was the beginning of beekeeping. And then they call up when the bees start to die and fall to the bottom. and we tease the story out, you know, and we find out they never put them in a hive, they never released them. It's just so sad. These people definitely need a class. They need a mentor. They need, you know, not to jump into things so quickly without any learning.

Jim Tew:

Well, you know, if you don't know, you don't know. It's easy to be critical. I had a story once where we were raising queens at Ohio State and we had a guy at the time we tried to provide replacement queens because we weren't professional at this. So we definitely didn't make any money, but we had one guy when he finally called back to tell him that the Queen died again, I had to say, What are you doing? How are you doing this? On the phone. You gotta be a detective. What's the technique? And what the guy was doing was releasing the queen and the attendant workers in an empty hive body, thinking that was going to turn into a beehive, and instead they were just dying. Oh, so it was just about six workers. Six six workers and a queen, probably on foundation. You know, at the time you just send the queen out. We don't want to chat with everybody who was calling in all that much, but Strange things happen when people don't know what they're doing. When you're releasing the Queen, you've mentioned rubber bands several times, and I didn't quiz you on that because I thought I'd quiz you about it now. What are you talking about with rubber bands in a queen cage?

Anne Frey:

Not when I'm releasing her, but when I'm moving her from the place she's hanging in the package. to a frame and then I'm gonna put the package in the hive. So her queen cage is held onto a frame with say two rubber bands. One rubber band I've noticed that the queen cage just kind of slides downwards and it might even tip and slip out from under the rubber band just fall. But it's it's a way of securing the Queen Cage to a frame, two rubber bands, make sure her screen is not facing a comb. It could be facing down, it could be facing up, it could be facing sideways, as long as her screening is not facing the comb or foundation. There's other ways of holding the queen cage up. Sometimes the queen cage comes with a little metal kind of leash on the end of it or uh There's other things that are done. Press it into the comb if you have combs. Just press the queen cage in without the screen getting pressed in. What do you think is the best way to attach a queen cage to a uh frame when you're installing a package of bees, Jim.

Jim Tew:

I don't know if it's the best way. That's a clumsy way. Clumsy way. One of the ways I've always used that leash you said it's the little wire wire tie. Yeah, a tab that comes on the queen, a tab that comes on the cage. I put a thumb tack on top of a of a frame where I want it, and then I wrap that around the thumb tack with the screen outward. I want the screen outward. I want the candy plug up. Okay. In a perfect world everything goes all right, but on just a few occasions in my Entire B life. If the candy plug is down and they're eating it out, I've had workers die in the cage and then drop down and block

Anne Frey:

Yeah, and the Queen's not really interested in moving bodies.

Jim Tew:

That's not her job. So these are all just picky yoon details. I just use that. Now there is one thing that only someone like me would do. Somewhere in my life, I saw the plans for a queen introduction frame. It's got a real thick top bar. And then there was a slot cut in that thick top bar where you would lay the cage and put it in there. So I've got two of those frames And the problem is they're somewhere out in my beehives right now. Next time I see them, I'll take 'em out. I don't know where they are. But you have to build a special frame and cut down the end bars and only a beekeeper like me would do all that. But it was a good way to release a queen with this easy slot right on top.

Anne Frey:

I tend to like things that could be used in multiple ways, not really specialized things, but I hope when you find that you just like nail it to the wall for the next time.

Jim Tew:

I've only seen two in my life and I've built both of them. So I had the plans for it somewhere. But that's just that's just examples. Sometimes they come with metal tabs, but when you do that wire tie thing I was talking about, invariably There's an extra frame you're stuck with. So either you lean it against the colony and you leave it there for four days, or you take it back to the barn and hope the mice don't find it. But you've got this one homeless frame Because everything is too tight if you put ten frames back in there with that queen cage in there.

Anne Frey:

Yeah. The other problem with the queen cage taking up kind of a leaves an extra space between the frames where you've put the queen cage, if a person doesn't come back within three days or seven days and see that she's out of her little cage and then remove her little cage. They're gonna have some really crazy comb being built in that large gap So coming back and getting the cage out and putting that saved tenth frame into its proper place, that's a thing. Don't want to forget that.

Jim Tew:

That is a thing. You are exactly right. I can I can only here we go again, assuming. I can only assume that we make the bees cluster around that queen And even though they've got comb, in many cases they've got comb, if they cluster around that queen, they'll begin to build new comb in that space.

Anne Frey:

Yeah, it's the kind of thing that might really confuse a first year beekeeper, you know, this space, there's comb in it, took the queen cage out, don't know what to do now, but You know, just use your mentor. Get a mentor. Get two mentors. Please, everybody, try and help out some beginners. Have you ever had like you just can't get the bees out of the cage and you're gonna You can't get them to pour out and you're tempted to just cut that screen right off the side of it, Jim?

Jim Tew:

Well, I have torn the screen apart before, not in rage, but in a way to get stuck feeder cans out. Sometimes that feeder can just would not come out. So I would cut through the screen and push it up from the bottom. But I've never had to cut the screen off just to get bees out. Have you had had to do that?

Anne Frey:

When it's chilly and we just can't seem to bop them through that circular center hole in the package. I've I've sometimes resorted to just, you know, I'm tired of getting them to aim at that. I'm just gonna slice this and dump 'em out of the side of this rectangular hole now. So it's okay to do that stuff. It's not like there's a law that they have to come out that circular hole where the can was.

Jim Tew:

No. The main thing is to get 'em out. And I hadn't thought about the coldness that you would have to deal with. I've had to release bees here several times when it was cold and rainy and I did that technique I told you about. You mentioned taking frames out and then putting the package in the spot where the frames were out.

Anne Frey:

Yeah, it's the perfect size. It's the perfect size if you take five out. And it just fits in there, it's the perfect length. I feel like they must have built the packages this long It can't be a coincidence that it fits perfectly inside of a hive body.

Jim Tew:

Well, it can't be. You know, I hadn't thought about that. Well I wonder if somebody had that insight. To make the packages fit inside of Deep High Body.

Anne Frey:

Maybe Wilbanks would know the answer. Reggie Wilbanks or Patrick

Jim Tew:

Yep, I've met Patrick. Of course I know Reggie well. This is not a promotion, but they've been in the queen and package business a long time. I'm sure they've had some stories, but Not here, not now.

Anne Frey:

Not now. But Wilbanks are great. There are suppliers at Betterbee, I have to say. They're very dependable. I like that they use the wooden cages. Have you ever experienced those plastic package cages?

Jim Tew:

There's one right here beside me. I try to find something else to do with them. They really want to be something else as a secondary purpose, but I have not found it. Could you pack one of those cages full of soil and raise orchids in it or something with Orchids growing out the side of it. Maybe. I use it as a space between an amplifier and a turntable I've got to disperse heat. So all it does is just so that heat the amplifier heat doesn't go right up to the turntable. These things don't sit in the yard and rot, and if you don't if you don't have 'em, I mean once you've got a plastic package, you've got a plastic package

Anne Frey:

You can. You can flatten 'em, but I like the wooden ones, you know, they're much more crushable and put it on the bonfire or you know, or it doesn't seem so horrible to have a pile of little fragile wood things around than a big pile of plastic stuff that'll never be used again.

Jim Tew:

They are hardy boxes. They I really wish I could find something else to do with it. Man, I do want to say this. They dovetail together very rigidly So you can pick up four. You could pick up twenty of them if they dovetail them that far together. Maybe you could build a wall. But they are tough, tough, tough to get apart. In mine, I figured out if you can get them down to about four packages and run a pipe clamp diagonally across that, you could put pressure on that and make those dovetail connectors release those packages and pop them apart. Otherwise you bang on them, bang on them, bang on them. Well I got these in those packages. That are getting all jostled around.

Anne Frey:

Maybe there's a technique we don't know about and it's just so obvious to the producers that they never mention it. But we're using the wooden packages.

Jim Tew:

And let's stop at this point and take a break and hear from our sponsor.

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Jim Tew:

.com Okay Anne. So you got the queen stuck on the side of a cage and what? On on the side of a frame, on the side of a comb For three days you said four at the most, maybe I would go for. Would you agree with the fact that the bees are going to react to the cage the way they're going to react to the queen? If you pull the frame out with the cage on it and the bees are just clinging to it like crazy and you can't brush 'em back and even one may have a stinger exposed That's not a good time to release that queen. But if you pull it and you brush them back and the bees move away from the cage and then they run back up and they're fanning and scenting They probably agreed that she's the one for them.

Anne Frey:

Yeah, yeah. They act to the cage the way they wanna act towards the queen inside. I agree. It's a pretty rare thing that there might be a queen loose with the bees in a package, but it could happen. So there's a queen in the cage that the package producer has installed with each package. But there's also a chance that the shaken bees that fell down the big funnel and went into the screened package might have had a queen with them. It's not unheard of for a colony to have two queens. It's rare, but it's not unheard of, but really rare to be in the package. They they have their systems and it's pretty um systematic the way that they package up these bees.

Jim Tew:

I don't speak bee, but sometimes it's as though that a queen is just not acceptable. You know, the queen isn't from those bees. In fact, the bees are probably not from the same colony, and the fact it's it's a it's a real Heinz 57 blend. So everybody's probably somewhat strange to each other in that package and they have to get used to each other. But I had a package last year that from the get go. The queen just was not acceptable. She laid about a frame and a half of brood and then poof she's gone. And did they raise a queen? I did podcasts on it. I had another queen. I put her in and I got her established. But the colony was set back. It was sluggish. It just gave me fits the whole year long. And it was the first one to die this past winter. So sometimes. Packages just seem to be on the wrong square.

Anne Frey:

Well maybe those bees knew something about that queen and there was some hatred or or, you know, they rejected that queen, but I wonder why they rejected the second one. Here's another thing about being set back. We haven't touched on the idea that packages don't advance for their first three weeks because even if the queen comes out of her cage in three days and begins laying maybe a day or so after that That's probably four days, five days with no eggs being laid. But then she starts laying eggs, and the eggs she lays, they're not going to grow up and become adult bees for another twenty-one days. So for that length of time, the population is falling. And then maybe twenty-one to twenty-six days after you installed it, they'll begin to grow. And that's a point as well for package people. It's like I did just recently hear a study that said that the packages people installed at the same time as a nuke. they did catch up in population strength by the end of the summer. But nucs, they start out strong and they go strong, strong, strong packages. They start out slow And then they're strong after a bit. So there's that three week lag.

Jim Tew:

I understand what you're talking about. You actually have fewer bees than you did when you shipped those bees in all those weeks ago. Because the bees that died off have not been replaced.

Anne Frey:

Just natural death.

Jim Tew:

Yep, natural death. Right. So that happens too.

Anne Frey:

And then they start to get replaced because the new eggs have grown up into new bees.

Jim Tew:

So as we've talked now for two segments, basically it's not always obvious how to release the queen, pull the screen back, punch the candy plug. Just take a technique. By some means, be sure you get her out. And At the same time, there's different ways to release packages, but the main thing is is to get the bees out, ideally on the comb, if not on comb, on foundation If they're going on foundation, I really hope you feed them because they're gonna need all the help they can get. How would you summarize these last two segments we've did now, Ann?

Anne Frey:

I think that if the person is confused at all still, they should definitely try and meet up with someone from their club or get, you know additional help before they go jumping into picking up their package. They gotta learn before they go. Usually, like you said, everything will be fine, but then there's those instances at the this end or that end of the spectrum where things are not fine. Most of time they're fine. Everything's great.

Jim Tew:

That's a good way to end it. Most of the time things are fine and everything is great. And I'm gonna say bye.

Anne Frey:

This has been good, Jim. Thanks.

Jim Tew:

I had a nice time. I wanted to talk about this. I mentioned in the first segment I've got spring fever, so Goodbye, and goodbye listeners, till next week.

Anne Frey:

Bye everybody.