May 13, 2011 | Garden Works

The bees are coming!

As many of you know, Habana Works has assembled its beehive, painted it, even tiled the thing in shiny blue, yet still we have no bees....

All of that changes tomorrow! After waiting for a few weeks longer than we expected due to weather issues, the bees will finally be arriving tomorrow morning.  On the very same day as the Block Party, no less! So while you're partying on Fulton street, we'll be just above you on the roof, playing with our new bee friends and getting them settled into their new home.

So how exactly does one get their bees into the hive? Do you just leave the package near it and let them fly in at will? Do you put the whole package in the hive? Do you smoke the bees? Well, you actually need to gently shake the bees into the hive - which sounds like a terrible idea, but apparently isn't!

First, you take a spray bottle full of a 1:1 mixture of sugar and water, and spray the bees down generously. When their wings are wet the bees can't fly, so this keeps them from reacting aggressively to the bee-box-shaking. 

In the bee box, you'll find the queen cage - a small wooden box with mesh covering the sides. On one end, there's a cork which you can pull out while the queen is on the other side of hte cage. You then quickly shove a marshmallow or homemade "queen candy" into the hole, to keep her from escaping.  You then suspend the queen cage on top of the frames (our instructor recommends pinning an old Metro Card to the queen cage with a flat tack, to keep it from slipping between the frames). The queen's attending bees will slowly eat through the marshmallow to free her - this gives the bees ample time to get used to the smell of the queen and accept her as their leader. 

Then, you just need to feed them with some more of the sugary syrup mixture, plug up the entrance with a little grass or an entrance reducer (if the bees haven't been in the box together for long, so that they don't abandon the hive) and leave them for a day to adjust! After that, the real beekeeping adventure begins...

Check back in next week for a Block Party redux and find out how these first few days of bee-rearing go!