May 10, 2014 - May 31, 2014

Edit: I have edited post to better describe a few details and add some pictures. Hope it's a bit easier to follow.

I picked up my package from Walter T Kelley in Kentucky on May 10th. It was a rainy, cloudy day and the temperatures were cooler when I got home, but it was dry enough to install the package. First, I put the queen's cage into the hive.

Here is a picture of the queen cage before I removed the cork (taking the picture was probably why I forgot about the cork, which could have been a big problem):

This is a picture of me installing the queen's cage into the hive (taken by my husband from outside the fence) and for anyone still following along at home, the cork is still in ...

Here is a picture of the queen cage after I had stuck it into the comb (yeah, the cork is still in there):

Here is a picture of the package, after I took out the queen's cage, but before I took out the feeder can:

I put on my veil, and took a selfie for posterity:

I installed the package by removing the feeder can, and then dumped as many bees as possible into the hive. By this time, my husband was too chicken to stand next to the fence (can you blame him?), and I was not about to stop what I was doing to take anymore pictures. Then I closed everything up, and called my Dad. He asked "did you remove the cork?"

I couldn't remember at that point, but was insistent that I needed to be sure the cork was out, so went back into the hive, and sure enough the cork was still there. When I put the cage back in, I tried my best to squeeze it in between the comb on the built out frames my Dad gave me, but I didn't do a good enough job, because 2 days later on May 12th, the queen cage was at the bottom of the hive, preventing the workers from eating through the candy. I put it back in place, and waited 2 more days.

On May 14th, they still had not eaten all the candy (but some progress had been made). I was forced to wait until Friday that week, because of rainy weather, so I finally removed the empty queen cage from the hive on May 16th. I closed up the hive after removing the queen cage and squeezing in the missing empty frame into the hive (noting that a lot of squeezing was needed, because of burr comb). I called my Dad again (this was probably at least the 5th or 6th phone call I placed to him that week) and he told me to absolutely go back in asap to remove all the burr comb from around the frames.

I had left a large space in the hive when I removed an empty frame from the outside and slid all the other frames over to place the queens cage between the center frames. The queen's cage had been in there for quite some time, and left them plenty of time and space to build a great deal of burr comb. My Dad explained that as long as this burr comb was in the hive, the bees would continue to work on the burr comb, instead of on the frames where I wanted them to build and fill. He also explained that I didn't know what was going on between the burr comb and the frame comb (there was a "secret" pocket in between the burr comb and the frame comb). There could have been any number of activities going on in that secret space that I needed to put a stop to. So I fired up the smoker for the second time that day, and went back in to remove all the burr comb. My Dad also explained that as long as burr comb was on the frames, I ran the risk of squishing the queen when I pushed the frames back tight together (at this point I had not confirmed that eggs were present yet).

I worried for a whole week that I had somehow squished my queen in the burr comb during my first time in the hive on May 16th. I was overjoyed to find brood of varying ages when I checked the hive again on May 24th. I was worried that the brood was not all grouped by similar ages, but another call to my Dad calmed my worries. He explained that a new queen will sometimes need some time to settle into a pattern, before she will lay in almost every cell at relatively close to the same time. So far so good.

On May 30th, I checked again, and things seemed to be going along well: lots of capped brood in a good pattern, with very few empty holes, and a good amount of activity and foraging. Throughout this time, the bees had often taken very little, if any syrup from the feeder jars, and I decided to leave them only one jar the next time I refilled. I also noted a surprising amount of honey comb that was tying the top bars together in some areas.

After a call to my Dad, and some discussion about the hive, he suggested I add the next box onto the top. About 8 of the 10 frames had some comb built and my Dad felt that if they were building that much on the top bars of the inner frames, they wanted to move up. He explained that as soon as the new brood hatched, the bees already building on the tops of the frames may start to feel like they should swarm. I expressed concern over the outer most frames not filling up, and he told me to be patient. Once the new brood hatches, they should fill up fast. The only thing he suggested is that the outer most frames may need to be flipped, so the outside face of the frame is turned inward to encourage them to fill it. He explained that, if left to their own devices, bees will usually fill a hive in a football sort of shape. So on May 31st, I added the second hive body.