My wife jokes with me that she “just knows” that the moment I open up my packages of bees that they are going to fly away and never come back. Well, it’s a funny thought, but it’s not going to happen. Let me explain…
On April 19, 2008, I’ll be picking up my two packages of 3lbs honeybees. In the package will be a syrup can for food, and a marked queen in a queen cage along with about 10,000 worker bees. While in the package, she will release her pheromone among the other worker bees where they will essentially become “hers”. When I install the queen, I’ll place her in the hive (in the queen cage) where in a few days the other bees, which I will have dumped inside the hive, will chew through a candy plug to free their queen. Then, if all goes well, she’ll begin laying eggs. Note: She has already mated which is for life. Any bees that may have flown away during installation will return to the hive where the queen is by following her pheromone.
"Flight of the Bumblebee" is a famous orchestral interlude written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, composed in 1899–1900 (Wikipedia).
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1 comment:
We thought about you and your bees this weekend as we watched the movie, "Bee Movie." If you haven't watched it you really should check it out. The kids would enjoy it and I think you would find it quite humorous. Let us know what you think if you watch it. =)
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