Today was the day...We received a call from the Cowden, Illinois post office at 06:30 this morning to let us know that our Honeybees had arrived, so we gathered our Sugar Syrup Sprayer and headed for the post office as quick as we could..
Upon arriving at the post office we found the bees to be in very good shape, there was very few dead bees in both of the packages, but I didn't see maybe a dozen dead bees total in both of the packages combined. We talked to the Post Mistress for ten to fifteen minutes explaining that the buzzing sound the bees were making was just that they needed a home and was probably a little hungry. After spraying both of the packages with some sugar syrup, they calmed right down. When we got back home I really had the hives and everything else ready to go for the bees except for spraying the frames with the sugar syrup. I sprayed the frames and re-installed them into the hive bodies in preparation of placing the bees into them.We removed 5 frames from each of the hive bodies so we could place the packages with the bees into the hive. I didn't really want to do it this way, but with bad weather approaching I wanted the bees in the hives and not have to keep them in the shed for a couples of days. Well I started out by spraying the packages one more time before I removed the plywood covering from the first package. I removed the cover and removed the feeder can and the queen from the first package and placed the plywood cover back on while I situated the queen in between the frames of the first hive. After placing the queen I removed the cover and placed and filled the feeder on top of the first hive. So far so good...no stings yet. After filling the feeder, I placed the Shallow Super we made to cover the top feeders on the hive and then replaced the inner cover and the Top Cover. I thought I was done with the first hive, but I was mistaken. During my excited state I forgot to pull the plug out of the queens cage and had to get back in and get that mistake taken care of, or the queen would not get released. Still not stings...Man I thought this is my lucky day. Now we were ready for Hive two. I went through and done everything the same, except this time I remembered to remove the cork for the end of the queens cage. Ooops here is where I encountered the







first sting...Must have been moving too fast for conditions. But really it didn't hurt too bad...Got me in the belly.
After filling the second feeder I was replacing all of the covers and got nailed again, but this time in the upper arm. Not to bad of a day, I expected getting stung more than this, so all, in all, it turned out better that was expected.