Plain Talk: Installing Tew Packages (230)

Episode 230 – Plain Talk: Installing Tew Packages

Jim Tew: Honey Bee Obscura Podcast listeners, it's me, Jim, in the bee yard. Every neighbor I've got seems to have decided today's the day to cut grass, so I can't wait until they finish. If there's a mower in the background, I just couldn't do much about it. I'm sorry. Listeners, I got two packages of bees. I'm doing what I've told innumerable beginning beekeepers to do. Don't just start with one, start with two. I've got other beehives here. I've talked to you about them.

Just because it's package season, I didn't want to be left out and look back on the spring season and say, "Why didn't I get some packages when I could?" I just went out and picked up two packages. What I'm going to do is just install these packages. I'll tell you how the procedure will work, and then you can tell me what you do or what you do differently or what I did wrong, or amazingly, if I do anything right, point that out. Stand by while I get ready.

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 honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim Tew: Listeners, I short-circuited the system for you. I didn't make you sit through me putting the empty equipment together and scraping off years of propolis and trying to find some frames of honey to put in. I'll let you miss all that. I did come across something that was just as annoying as it can be. Every empty beehive that I went to to try to commandeer, to redo, to use for these two packages had ants in it, A-N-T-S, ants. Sometimes black carpenter ants, sometimes these much smaller black ants. Then you got to knock off. You got to go find a brush. I tried to bounce them off. They wouldn't come out. I was thinking to myself that it's always the things you're not prepared for.

I think I've got the ants out because the package bees really wouldn't care for that all that much. I've got my hive tool here. Let me get the packages. Stand by. Probably breathing in my mic. I apologize for that. The two packages are wood packages. In years past, the supplier used those plastic packages. I can't tell that I like one any better than the other. Those of you who've done packages thousands of times, as much as I have, they come stapled together with a lath strap that I've got to snap off with my hive tool. Then, while I'm doing that, the edges of the screen that stick out of the package are just great for giving you tiny little scratches on your fingers and hands.

If you're an old man, then that makes you really bleed. Now I'm looking at because it can be different techniques, but what this producer is using is a plastic yellow strap that's attached to the queen cage. My next plan is to take off the outer cover, which is stapled down, and not stick the hive tool in my thumb. I want to save this top, if I can, to reuse it. Now that's off. Then I'm down to one of the most peculiar points, how to get this can that fits perfectly in this hole. How do you catch that to get it out? This time I did do it. I'm going to bounce the bees down. I'm going to take that cover and lay it on top, because the bees will start coming out immediately.

The bees that are stuck on the feeder can, I'm going to put in the hive. In fact, listeners, while I'm doing this, I'm going to go ahead and slightly enlarge the holes, just by knocking a few more holes in the feeder can, and then I put that over here. Now then, what I've got is a box of bees. Listeners, I've got 10 frames, and I'm laying it sideways on top of the frames, and then in that position, I'm going to pull out the queen cage. The bees, of course, are clustering on that. This queen has only been with these packages since the day before yesterday. That's not enough time.

I'm having a look. She's in there, she's alive. I put the cage right there. This is what I've got then so far. I've got 10 frames in a bottom deep, and there's some honey in there. They're fully drawn. That may be good, that may be bad, depending on your opinion about old combs. Then I've got an empty deep shell up top, and all I did was lay the package on its side with the package entrance open. I got the queen in the cage. I didn't take the corks out. I'm going to come back and release her directly. Today is Sunday. If I can hang on, I'll probably come back on Wednesday, depending on the weather, and I'll release the queen directly. I'll probably talk to you about that when I do it.

The bees can come out now as they want to. I'll leave them alone for a while. There's probably 30 or 40 bees flying around that are lost. I don't know what happens to them. They may go into the hives here that are active. They may find the entrance, but you know what? I'm afraid it's going to happen to them. I think that they're just going to probably end up going to bee heaven. There's probably 25 or 30 bees that could not stay in the cage until I got the cage installed. It was fairly quick. I've got reasons for doing this. Why don't we take a break, and then I'll come back and I'll talk about the other technique that I have used innumerable times, too, and tell you why I'm doing this sluggish way that's a two-step procedure.

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Jim Tew: Listeners, if you're new to this, or not new to it, but just want to think about it again, there's actually two ways to go about this. The first way is much more dramatic, much more imposing. You just snap the top off like I did, take out the can, take out the queen cage, shake the bees. I've said before on this podcast, my old professor said, "Shake them out like shelled corn." Every time I do this, I have to think about shelled corn. You shake them out, and then as quickly as you can, you close them up, you put some bees at the entrance, you hope they find their way in, you hope they begin to scent, and then it's done. That's very fast.

It's a one-step procedure, and you don't come back tomorrow or Wednesday to harass the bees. You probably took that plug out. In the old days, we would actually punch a small nail hole through the candy plug so the bees would eat it out faster. In the new days, with queens costing so much, I don't do that anymore. Then that was quick and dirty, and then it was over. You come back four to five days later, gently pull a frame or two out, see if you could just see eggs. You didn't have to find the queen. If you saw eggs, close everything up and get out, and then wait a week or two for that colony to establish itself. Then boom, it turns into a beehive when happy times are here.

On occasion and only rare occasions, I've had that package of bees abscond. Who knows? I can't ask them why they're doing that. It doesn't happen a lot, but it happens often enough that in my case now I paid $140 for these packages. In my case, those few times, that money just flew away. An easier technique, and I don't think it's as traumatizing for the bees, not an easier technique, another technique, it's much more complicated, requires more equipment. On top of the 10 frames in that bottom deep, I put an empty deep, and then I use this slow-release method where I don't shake the bees out. I don't handle them that roughly. I don't get them that upset.

They quietly come out on their own over here. There's all kind of bees on the roof of that hive I just did, and they're also attracted to the other package I haven't installed. As of this moment, there are no bees that are coming in and out of the entrance. See, they got to come down all the way off that top series of 10 frames. Here we go in the second colony. I'm going to do the same thing. I briefly had a thought that I'll shake out a package, and I will do the slow way. Then I thought, no, not going to do that. I'm going to do them both the slow way. I've been doing that now for the last seven or eight years. Kind of gotten used to it.

This is the only way I know of to conclusively, dependably get this can out is to just stick your hive tool right through the screen on the bottom-- I got it coming out, on the bottom of the can, and push it out with your hive tool. Of course, you destroy the cage when you do that, but I don't care. I've got crazy numbers of cages over there I never used again. I have to watch my Ps and Qs here because while I'm talking with my mouth open, I can swallow a bee in a heartbeat with all this activity. I've got the queen out and I've got her laid in the cage.

Now I'm taking the package cage and I'm laying it sideways inside the colony, inside the hive, and as quickly as possible because there's silly bees flying everywhere. Listeners, I'm going to just leave an inner cover there, and I'm going to leave the inner cover slipped back a bit to see if that'll help the lost bees. Instead of putting the outer cover, inner cover on, pushing it back from the top so that the bees can possibly figure out that there's something going on there. It's quietening down, except for the lawnmowers. There's random bees flying everywhere. I don't see any signs of excitement. For the time being, everything should be okay.

I'm going to sit down for a whole list of reasons, not the least of which is that I'm tired. There's honey on there. I can't sit there. Let me go over here. Sit on this hive stand. I haven't yet been able to come out here and cut grass, so I have a hard time walking out here. I've tried to discreetly tell you in the past, my yard's a mess. Several years ago, I had two trees go down in the yard, two tall trees, and they busted up beehives and tore up fences and tore up the ground and made a huge mess. Not ready to talk about it, but my wife was sick for about two years. Early March, I don't have my wife anymore.

I need to get back out here and get the parts of my life under control that I can do anything about. I'm going to come out here and clean things up and feel better about this. Bees are settling down, and listeners, they are using that upper entrance readily. Do I wait? All I did was just push the inner cover back about an inch. Instead of making all these lost bees fly everywhere and look for that bottom entrance and then go up across 10 frames, I gave them an upper entrance. Now, I've got to close that because tomorrow, they're going to be bonkers to use that upper entrance. I may come back later today or even tonight and close it off and make them go out that way.

I always feel so much better when these bees are released. I'm just as nervous as I can be. I've never killed a package. I can tell you that in all my beekeeping years, I have never killed a package, and I really don't want to start now. When those bees are confined, I'm just antsy all the time. I keep them in my wood shop on the cement floor where it's dark and cool. I should end this podcast, but I just enjoy sitting here watching the bees figure out their new world. These bees have come from Georgia. They were hauled up by a contract hauler-beekeeper who does this every year. He brings back about just under 2,000 packages. It's a labor of love.

I don't know why he does it, but he brings them back. Just last week, these bees were all over pine thickets down in south Georgia, and now they're here in northeast Ohio trying to wonder, if one, they deserve this. If they didn't have the lawn mowers, it's a beautiful day. I've got bees flying everywhere. I'm going to come back tomorrow. It's supposed to be a nice day again, and I'm going to finally try to tackle those big hives. I've got to tell you, I dread that. I actually considered asking for help. What I'm seeing right now it's just a lot of random flight. The bees have not been aggressive.

There was a bee that tried to sting my shirt, my sweater. That's the only bee that showed any animosity, otherwise, they've been okay. The package producer had some challenges meeting his orders this year because he was experiencing some of that die-off that we talked about for a while. Right now, it's just one of those days in the bee yard. Tonight, when I try to doze off with so many things on my mind, I'm going to replay this file, the quietness, the buzz, the beauty of the lawn mowers, and it'll be a good evening. I'm going to leave you here for a bit now, let the bees settle down.

I'm going to clean up my mess, and I'll give you a report on this probably on Tuesday or Wednesday when I release these queens. That's it for now. So far, it was uneventful. It was just two packages. I didn't really need either one of them. I just wanted them. Now that I'm telling you bye, there are bees coming out of the entrance of the colony that I don't have it pushed back. It only took them just a few minutes longer to find the other entrance. Now I'm telling you bye. All right. I'll talk to you again soon. This is Jim, signing off.

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