10 More Packages Of Bees Arriving Today!

Most of these have been spoken for as we will have six new hives in D.C. by Thursday. That puts us over the 30 new colony mark within the District. A package of bees contains approximately 10,000 bees, a queen, and some syrup to feed them during the trip.

If you are still interested in a hive let me know soon. I have a few spare packages left that I will be making into nucleus colonies to warehouse them.

These are gentle, Italian strain bees from Georgia that I have found have built up very quickly. Note that these Italians, although the bread and butter strain, may lack the heartiness to survive our winters and our pests. I recommend requeening your hive in mid-summer with one of the more resistant strains (carni, russian, hybrids) to improve your chances of a strong hive coming out of the winter of 2011-2012.

The hive configuration we have been recommending to our new beekeepers and which we use on our rooftop consists of a brood chamber of two deep supers (with beeswax foundation), ventilated bottom board and inner cover, and a four-gallon hive-top feeder for syrup feeding.  You can see the bees are quite happy with it!

If you haven't seen how an installation works, check out the attached video.