Saturday morning I picked up two packages from BeeWeaver with my first stop being a hive installation at Sunshine Community Gardens.
Here is the package sitting on top of their new home.
Jean has a plot at the garden and is also interested in beekeeping. She met me at the garden to assist in the installation. Here we are performing the hardest part of a package installation – getting the syrup can out of the package.
After removing the syrup can and the queen cage, the bees got dumped into the hive.
Once the bees were in, I added the frames to the hive including one with the queen cage attached.
I then added some syrup for them to jump start the wax producing. I decided to go with pail feeders this year. While I liked my hive top feeder and had good success with them, so did Small Hive Beetles.
Here is the hive all closed up and ready to start pollinating the gardens. I hope Queen Rosemary will have a successful year.
Urban Beekeeping in Austin, Texas 