10 Tips for Establishing Your First Hive
From Kim Flottum of Bee Culture magazine, slightly modified for top bar users.
1) When you get your packaged bees home, spray the sides with a 1:1 sugar mist to settle and feed the bees.
2) Get your hive ready by removing half the frames or top bars from the middle of the box.
3) Pry off the cover on the top of the bee package if you are using packaged bees, and carefully remove the can inside containing food. Don’t drop the queen cage, which is suspended right next to the can. Replace the cover so the bees don’t leave.
4) Remove the queen cage and suspend it from the top of one of the … top bars, using wire or the tin hanger from the cage. Bring some string with you just in case.
5) Spray the bees again, then thump them down to settle them.
6) Dump the bees into the cavity produced when the top bars were removed.
7) If you have a Garden Hive, fill the feeder and place in back of the hive but in front of the divider board before dumping the bees in, then carefully replace the remainder of the top bars and fit the roof on to the hive box. Be careful not to squash any bees, this is not a good time to upset them!
8) Come back in four or five days. Check the feeder for more feed, take the queen cage out, and NOW remove the cork on the candy end of the cage and replace as before.
9) In 10 days check again. She should be released and laying eggs. You are now a beekeeper.
10) Get a good book and read that, attend meetings, take a class, meet a beekeeper and have fun!
