Package Bees 2015

     Our Package Bee season has gotten off to a good start.  I drove down to Redding on Monday with Alan Pomeroy.   Steve Park and his crew loaded us up with 555 packages on Tuesday morning and we arrived back at the Beez Neez in Snohomish a little after 9:00 pm.  It was an unseasonably cool day in Redding. The temperature was only 45 degrees when they loaded the trailer.  The weather was cool and rainy for the entire trip back up to Washington State.  A perfect day for transporting bees.  There are about 3,500 bees to the pound. Therefore a four pound package has about 14,000 bees and a three pound package has about 10,500. Using that measure I estimated that we carried about 7,750,000 bees on our first trip.   That many honeybees generate a lot of heat so it is very important that the load is well ventilated so the bees don't overheat.  As long as the trailer is moving  there is good airflow over the packages to keep them cool. Once the bees are loaded into the trailer we stop only for fuel on the drive back to Snohomish.

330 3 lb packages ready to be loaded

Steve and his crew loading the 4 lb packages

     The packages come as groups of five, stapled together with two lathe strips across the top of the packages on either end. These groups are tied together with additional lathe strips such that the entire load is all interconnected and the load cannot shift during transport. This is critically important as the packages are put in place leaving air channels for ventilation. I've always been very impressed that Steve Park personally supervises the loading of the packages into our trailer.

Steve securing the last few packages in place

    Upon our arrival at the Beez Neez we were greeted by a hearty crew of volunteers that helped unload the packages.  David Oberstadt had prepared the shop by taping tarps down where the packages would be stacked.  The packages generate a lot of sticky debris that is a serious mess to clean up. I save the disposable tarps that cover our incoming shipments of woodenware just for this occasion.  It is so much easier to through the tarp away than it is to clean the floor. It took us about 2 and a half hours to undo what Steve Park had done in about 45 minutes.  David and Ethan Fabela  pried off all of those lathe strips and marked the syrup cans of all the packages with marked queens.  Then Dawn Goodwin vacuumed off all of the hitchhiker bees on the outside of the packages.   The local Mormon missionaries then took the packages and stacked them in the shop area. It went very smoothly. The only significant glitch was a noise complaint from a neighbor down the street. I know it may surprise some people, but apparently I can be a bit loud at times.  We curbed our enthusiasm a bit and completed the unloading at about 11:45 pm.

Ethan Fabela prying off the lathe strips

Dawn Goodwin enthusiastically vacuums off the hitch hikers

Elder Cottle

Elder Leavitt

Preparing for Package Bees

   Things have been pretty busy down at the Beez Neez. We have been taking lots of orders for package bees, assembling equipment, and trying to be ready for the annual craziness of package bees.  I have two different friends who are each loopy enough to want to drive down to California with me to pick up the package bees.  The impending package bee week is forcing me to clean up my act at the store and get at least part of the store organized and ready for the bees.

   I really miss Quentin, a former employee who moved back to Wyoming this past year.  Quentin is really good at organizing stuff, not so much my strong suit. However, I don't begrudge him moving back home to take care of his aging parents.  I have replaced him with a total of four part time employees; two adults who are seasonal, and two teenagers who are also seasonal but weren't intended to be.  The two adults, David and Mike, are both very knowledgeable about bees so that has made my life much easier. One of the boys hurt his leg playing basketball and just had surgery two weeks ago on April Fools Day.  I have lost his services for about a month. The other boy is doing track so is also temporarily not available.  I hope to have both of the young men back before the start of summer. I will lose at least one of the part time adults some time in May.

    We have a new shirt on order for the package bees.  It's patterned after a T-shirt my daughter had silk screened for me.  It has a drawing of a queen bee on the front with the inscription, "All hail the Queen".   I'm doing this one strictly as a girl's shirt in pink or gray. I'm hoping it to sell well.  I will add a photo of the shirt as soon as they arrive.

   I've also been busy getting my own hives in order. I have been going through my deadouts,  replacing old brood comb and repainting boxes, bottom boards, and lids while they are not occupied by bees.

   I was fortunate enough to have a day off on a warm day two weeks ago in which I was able to go through my surviving bee hives.   One hive had just five frames of bees, but had four frames of capped brood.  It was a one deep hive so it was a ticking time bomb as far as population explosions go.   The four frames of capped brood translate to about 12 frames of newly emerged bees over the next 12 days. I knew they needed a second box within the next week or so.  Six days passed before I hit another day off warm enough for me to open the hive.  In just six days they had gone from five frames of bees to almost ten frames of bees.  I was able to add the second box in the nick of time.  It is amazing how fast a beehive's population can grow in the spring. I could have merely slapped a second box on a week ago, but I wanted to prep the frames first and I wanted to redo some of the frames in the lower deep box.  I use plastic foundation and the bees do a much better job drawing out the comb if a little extra beeswax is added to the frames. Without the extra wax, sometimes they draw the comb out a little funny.  The frames I needed to replace were ones that hadn't been properly prepped.