Life With the Ladniers: And Then There Were Three

I got our new bees into their home today! I also did the first hive checks of the season on the other two hives. It was pretty much the same story for both. Out of the 9 frames they have to work with at the moment, the yellow hive was working on the center 5 and the white hive were on the center 4. They are still eating the simple syrup so I'll need to make some more and refill it in a few days. They weren't quite ready for me to add the second boxes this time but I'm thinking I will during the next visit. As for hiving the swarm:

It was kind of different than hiving a package of bees. First of all, they are mature bees rather than young bees. I did not get stung but the buzzing was more intense. That also could have been due to the fact that there were more bees in this swarm than come in a package. The other big difference is that the queen was not separated into her own little box. She would have been in the center of the swarm but there was not really a way for me to find her. I was assuming she would have still been attached to the branch so I was especially careful when shaking those bees into the hive. I'm pretty sure she made it in but I won't know for sure for about a week. Fingers crossed! The good news is that if these bees don't stay there's no major loss on our end.