You are Done – For Now
You now have a single deep-body starter hive ready to give you new bees a comfy home. All you need to do is to add your bees.
If you get your bees as a package, you just pour them into this hive and they should settle in pretty quickly (follow their instructions on how to handle the queen). You should probably read instructions or watch a video on how to introduce you new bees and especially their queen, to your new hive.
If you get a five-frame nuc, you remove the same number of frames from the middle of your hive and insert the ones that came in your nuc. This will give you a jump start because the nuc should include brood as well as some supplies honey and bee bread to help feed the bees.
You should probably feed your new bees. We will cover feeding in greater detail in our next article.
As your colony grows, you may need to add more hive bodies to your beehive. This not only gives the queen more room to lay, but provides more space to store honey and other resources to help the colony through dearths (times of year when no nectar is flowing) and through the winter. You should add a new hive body after the bees have drawn out comb on your empty frames and started to fill them. You can determine the best time by inspecting your hive every week or two.
If you enjoyed this, check out our other content for new beekeepers, including So You Want to Raise Bees: What are your Objectives?
