Installing Packaged Bees

When we decided to get bees, all I knew about them was that they lived in those square wooden box bee hive things. I didn't know how to get the bees in there though. Do they like the white boxes and move in on their own? Do you have to catch them in the wild? As it turns out, you can buy packaged bees complete with a queen. They generally come in 3 pound packages, in a wooden box with screened sides.

If your packaged bees are not hanging happily in a cluster as in the photograph, mix 1 part sugar to 1 part water and use a clean paint brush or pastry brush to brush the sugar water on the screen. Don't worry about getting some on the bees, they'll clean it off of themselves and each other. Keep painting until they begin to lose interest. When their bellies are full they'll calm down and cluster together.

Just leave them in the box and wait until late afternoon or early evening to install them. This way, as darkness falls, the bees are inclined to settle into the hive rather than run off exploring. In the morning, they'll make orientation flights and figure out where their new home is located and how to get back to it.


Use a screwdriver to pry the lid off of the packaged bees.


Beneath the lid you'll see two metal circles. The small one is attached to the queen's cage. The large one is a can that has sugar water in it and tiny holes on the bottom that allow the bees to eat in their journey to your home. Most bees are raised in warm climates such as Georgia, the Carolinas, or California. They sometimes travel a long way by truck before reaching their final destination.

You'll want to don your beekeeper's veil and possibly some gloves before you go any further. Pull the queen's cage out, using your hands or the screwdriver. Bees will start crawling out of the package; don't let that rattle you.


The queen's cage is a little piece of wood with an indented area for the queen and her attendants. The indented area in the cage shown is made of three circular areas drilled into, but not through, the piece of wood. There is a screen to provide ventilation and to keep the queen separated from the new hive until they've become accustomed to her pheromones. If you introduce a strange queen to a hive of bees, they may kill her. So you let them get to know one another over the period of a few days.

One end of the queen's cage has a fairly large "candy" filling and the other end is blocked with a very small cork. In the picture, the candy is white and fills the entire circular area on the left-hand side of the queen's cage. Remove the metal piece from the candy end, and hang the queen's cage in your bee hive between two frames. My hive currently has a deep box on the bottom and a shallow super; I placed the cage on top of the frames in the deep and removed a frame from the super to make space for the queen's cage.

Over the next few days, the bees will eat into the candy, eventually freeing the queen. By the time she makes her grand exit, the hive will be accustomed to her and they'll all get along swimmingly. I'll check the queen's cage in a few days and if she hasn't gotten out I'll remove the cork from the non-candy end of the cage. Once the queen is out, I'll remove the cage from the hive and replace the frame I removed from the shallow super.


Now remove the can of sugar water. The bees will begin exiting the package. Just move slowly and deliberately. Honeybees are curious, not aggressive; they generally don't sting unless they feel they're threatened.


Many folks say you can just set the package of bees, opening down, on the frames. They will exit the package and enter the hive in search of the queen. I did this, and balanced the hive's outer cover over the package to prevent dew from getting into the hive, on the bees, and chilling them.

When I went back after dark to remove the package and close up the hive, there were still a lot of bees in the package, so I resorted to the more common method of shaking the bees out of the package. You don't shake the package back and forth like you'd shake a ketchup bottle; rather, you raise it aloft and bring it down rapidly and stop with a good hard jerk, which causes the bees to fall out in a big clump. Two or three of these strong shakes and most of the bees were out of the package and in the hive.


I put the shallow super, the inner cover, and the outer cover in place and left the package near the hive entrance so the few remaining bees could make their way out of the package and into the hive.

I have another hive waiting on a package of bees that won't arrive for a couple of days. Like the hive I'm working with, the waiting one has drawn comb with some honey and pollen in it. I put an old towel over the entrance of the waiting hive, to prevent this new batch of bees from going next door and robbing it.


Early the next morning I went out to check on my bee hive. Most of the bees had left the package but a few remained motionless in small clusters; the overnight low was 41F.


There was lots of activity at the hive entrance, as bees took orientation flights and got ready for life in their new digs.

I went out again at noon when the temperatures were in the 70s and happily my "dead" bees had all thawed out and exited the package. While I probably won't harvest any honey for my own consumption until next year, I'll enjoy greater production from my garden, berry bushes, and fruit trees. I'll also get the enjoyment of watching these fascinating insects go about their daily activities.