It's taken me longer to post this than I had hoped, but I'm happy to report that the post-package-installation inspection of my honeybee colonies yielded good results. In all four hives the queens were successfully released from their cages and accepted by the workers.
Unfortunately it is rather difficult to take photographs while trying to quickly inspect each hive, so I've created a few graphics to illustrate how the bees develop the hive once they are installed. The graphics represent a longitudinal section of a top-bar beehive.
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| Once the bees are in the hive they will hang together in a cluster around the queen cage. |
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| The cluster of bees will begin producing wax and forming it into comb. During this time the queen cage will open allowing the queen to join the colony. |
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| Three days after the bees were installed the beekeeper opens the hive and removes the now empty queen cage. |
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| Opening the hive: top bars are removed one at a time and inspected. |
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| Here is an example of a queen cage that has become partially embedded in newly built wax comb. To remove the cage I cut through the soft new wax with a knife. If I do it very carefully and slowly the bees will hardly notice. |
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| After the queen cage is removed the colony will continue to grow and build more wax comb. This graphic illustrates typical top-bar comb growth during the first year. |
