3 packages arrives late today will install tomorrow morning

Was sorta bummed but they were mailed from Texas Monday evening, didn't expect them till thursday. Early thursday I will install them for now have sprayed them down with sugar water and just keeping them quiet. Very few dead bees and it seems I gathered a few strays frpom somewhere a few light colored bees were taking a interest in tha packages or the sugar water lol.
Barry

 

finished installing the girls to new house

 

shook about half inside the hive over the queen cage, rest on the towel trying to not get many dead bees inside the hive--alittle less work for the house keeping bees, though there will always be a few dead bees that fall inside.
Barry

 

put down 10m plastic to keep the weeds down, and make a barrier of sorts against ants. and yeah all went according to plan, for once lol:thumbsup:

 

took a quick peek in the hives to see is queens were released, they were, small amount of comb starting to be drawn, as expected, what I did not expect is when I was closing up the second hive, saw a blue dot on the black plastic I am setting on the ground to keep weeds and grass down around the hives. The blue dot was on the back of the Queen she evidently dove off a frame and I failed to notice. I scooped her up and returned her to the top bars of the frames immediately she was checked out by a few dozen workers and then everything resumed as normal as she slid down between the frames--close one--buckfast bees tend to be dark anyway without the blue dot she would have been most difficult to spot.:shock:

 

Yeah all the queens were with blue dot, last years queen had a yellow dot, since this my first season using marked queens, I never paid attention to color code for the year.
But for sure I am glad I had them clipped and marked lol the potential for disaster was certainly there.
Barry

 

interesting--in Oct of 2011 was sent a queen with yellow dot, this year 3 queens/ package blue dots hmmm!
Barry

 

all the packages and queens I have ever gotten, always had a small contingent of workers say 5 0r 6 to feed the queen, these didn't queen was alone being fed from the bees in the package I assume. heard that was going to be the thing of the future faster acclimation to the bees and queen. interesting.
Barry