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