Day 3: Beginner's Mistakes

This is my last catch-up post on the bees! So Day 3 is the day everything went sideways. All the bees were in all the hives, and they were to sit for a week without interference. To get my bee fix, I sat and re-read the instructions for installing the package and the nucs to make sure I had done everything right. Oops.

I don't know how I did it, but twice I read 6-8 Tbs in a gallon of water for the sugar syrup instead of 6-8 lbs. That's a pretty major mistake so Zaga suited up, I put on veil and gloves (my new beekeeping attire), and off we went to renourish the bees. We mixed a new syrup with the correct ratio. Then as quickly and efficiently as we could, we removed the divider feeders, dumped the liquid in them on the ground, and refilled each feeder 2/3-3/4 full with the new syrup. In hindsight we should have filled them all the way. We put the sticks back into them so that if bees should happen to fall in they could climb out.

Then we got out of our gear and headed back to our homes. I settled back onto the couch on the deck to read some more bee install porn. Oh no. When I reread the part about hanging the queen cage, I finally absorbed the part where it said to hang it with the mesh sides facing out so the worker bees could get to them. Damn. I remembered to hang it vertically. I remembered to take the corks out. (At least I remembered during the session where I was installing them--I did have to go back and take the queen cage out of the first hive I set up as I had forgotten to pull the cork the first time I put it in the hive. I didn't put that in my first post, but honesty about mistakes compels me to add it here). But I hung them with the mesh sides towards the foundation frames as I was trying to minimize the space between the frames so the bees wouldn't build comb out into it.

Thus came the decision crisis: I had already been in the hive once on a day when I shouldn't be in it at all. So which would be worse, to go in and mess with the bees again today, or to wait until tomorrow to turn the queen cages. Clearly the correct answer is way above my pay grade, so I called Bee Weaver to ask them. This is the ONLY thing I don't like about Bee Weaver apiaries and bee good store: They don't have a phone number you can call to speak to someone who knows anything about bees. They have an answering service. If it's urgent, they pass on your message and someone will call you back. Or not. Then you call again. Then someone calls you back. And they're very nice and very helpful when they do call. I just would like to be able to ask "to go in or not to go in, that is the question", and get an answer in one phone call. At least during business hours.

But I left my message, then I called back again and asked for another call back, then I finally heard from Danny Weaver and he said, yes, better to go in today. We had our chat after I had had a couple of glasses of wine, or maybe a negroni, but I was game. So I texted Zaga, and out we toddled to flip around the queens. I did the minimal suit-up thing as I am over clothes, and when I pulled the queen cages it looked like they had already been eaten through in two of the three cages. I dutifully reinstalled them correctly anyway, and sealed up the hives for the rest of the week.