We are now livestock owners! As of a week ago, Edward returned from a business trip to the D.C. area with two packages of bees.
In the interests of general FYI, we did take classes in beekeeping back in 2006 from the Montgomery County Beekeepers Association. Boy, did we learn a lot! Ed has had a long-standing interest in beekeeping, and he found out about the class. When we found out that Yvonne could take the class for less if she came along, we thought, "That's a deal!" Turned out to be an even better deal than we imagined. In addition to the broad range of experiential data we received, beekeepers are some of the most colorful human beings on earth. Attending MCBA classes and meetings were educational in more than one sense of the word.
The important part, however, was how helpful and enthusiastic the club members were to get new beekeepers (the "new-bees") started. In the past 15 years or so, a great number of hives in the U.S. have been decimated by various blights, parasites and other less transparent factors. Knowledge of these issues is important for anyone planning to keep hives. Beekeepers have to know what they are looking for in their colonies to accurately assess the well being of their bees. Seasonal awareness of weather, nectar flow, pollen availability and neighbors' attitudes have all got to be on the beekeeper's radar. This preparation helped us greatly to start our own hives.
Last week, we started out bright and early Sunday morning to introduce our bees to their new homes. We carried the two packages out to the spot we'd selected between our blackberry brambles and the garden. Fortunately, the temperatures were balmy and there was little wind. We carefully pulled the queen cage (along with dedicated attendants) from the first package, quickly covering the opening it left on top of the main package so only a few more bees would fly out. We balanced the queen cage between the hive frames as we had been instructed so that the rest of the bees would be able to find her quickly. The cage holding the queen is often stoppered with a candy plug which the worker bees will chew through to release the queen. This cage had a small cork plug as well, guaranteeing some insurance that the queen would make it to her new home safely. 
Later we would assist our workers in getting the queen out by gently pushing in the cork when we discovered her still in the cage a day later. The workers now had greater access to the queen's chamber and could enable her escape.
Then the real fun begins. We have to remove the can of sugar syrup that has been feeding the bees, while one of us (Ed) up ends the cage and dumps the buzzing, excited contents into the hive body. Only our bottom section has frames to get the hive started so there's room for two feeders to give the new occupants a food supply. Ed deftly handled this duty with verve and élan. Then we did it all again for our second hive. We are happy to relate that few injuries were sustained. We both already possessed beekeeper's jackets and kept our hoods on during the moving operation. A day's inspection later revealed that the bees were starting to build out the wax foundations, gather nectar and generally make themselves at home. There was some burr comb on the floor of the hive bodies and between some of the frames Burr comb= any comb built in a random fashion around the frames.
It's best to scrape this off as soon as it is discovered so that later the hive body doesn't resemble a random mess of labyrinthine combs. In addition, it's best not to let the queen to have time to lay eggs in this stuff so that when it's removed, you are not killing off developing bees at the same time.
Here at the end of Week One, we were happy to see both of our queens busily moving about the hive, attendant bees on duty and eggs clearly present in the comb. There were even a few capped cells with honey! We also had to scrape out a bit of burr comb to abort some extracurricular building projects. One small piece of burr had some capped honey and pollen. So far, the apiculture experiment seems to be well under way.
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