This year our bee season began on April 13th with a trip to Noble Apiaries in Dixon, California (near Sacramento) to purchase four “packages” of bees. That phrase, “package of bees” is a term describing a mesh-lined wooden or plastic box containing typically 3 lbs of bees (approximately 10,000 bees) plus a queen bee inside her own small cage. She is inside her own cage for her protection because those bees and queen have recently been united and the bees may not yet accept her as their queen (more on that later).

At this time we had one hive of Russian bees (more about bee races later) that had overwintered from the previous season which was located in the southeast corner of the Community Garden. The 3 hives of Russian bees we had established at Star Route Farms in Bolina had crashed at the end of the season in August. My best guess was Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) brought on by a late surge of Varroa mite infestation. So I picked up three more Russian hives for Star Route and one for my personal apiary at home. It is the nature of beekeeping to end up with more than one hive whether you want to or not.

After picking up these four packages and then driving to Bolinas where Nick, the manager at Star Route had prepared 3 hives to receive bees I then had to perform the ritual of hiving a package of bees.