Installing the Hives
Common questions I get asked as a beekeeper include:
How do you start a beehive?
How do you keep the bees in your yard?
How many queens do you have and where do you get them?
Do bees really come in the mail?
I had those same questions as a new beekeeper. Fortunately, a good mentor can help ease the fear of the unknown! A honey bee’s world revolves around their queen. Where the queen goes, the hive follows. In early 2022, I purchased my first two packages of bees, and yes, they can come in the mail! Packages typically contain around 10,000 bees accompanied by a queen bee in a cage. There is one queen bee per colony. She is not the bees’ original queen, so the cage allows time for her pheromones to spread, causing those 10,000 bees to accept her as their own.
When a beekeeper receives a package of bees, they transfer the package of worker bees into a hive and gently place the caged queen between frames. Although the bees may not recognize the queen, her presence usually encourages them to remain in the hive. After a few days, the queen is released and accepted by the colony. By this time, foraging bees have learned the hive’s location and started getting to work. As for keeping bees in the yard, they actually have a range of around 2 miles! It is amazing, but bees will find their way home after forage each and every time. Even with an apiary full of hives, bees know where they are going. Many times it feels like they have a better sense of direction than we do!