Our bees arrived! Sadly, many of them didn't make it through the post office. We were only able to save three of the six hives that arrived, and one of those might not make it since we had to combine a number of them to have enough bees to support the queen.
Jen showed us how to insert the queen's chamber into the hive. We pulled out a cork to expose a sugar cube that the workers will eat through to free her. The time that it'll take them to eat it will be enough (hopefully!) that her pheromones will convince the bees we've put in her hive that she's their queen.
Installing bees is quite a sight: you need to scrape them out, bang the box on the ground and shake it to get all of them out and into the hive.
Glad we didn't get stung! And I hope that hive survives. More on that when we go back in a little bit to check on them!
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