[redfan]

We had a nice weekend, albeit a little windy.

I got my Saskatraz pkg installed Wednesday (4/17) evening. It went fairly well, with only a couple of minor issues.

This pkg came in what's called a Bee Bus. (Photo 1) As you can see, it is plastic, and it contains rock 'n roll Rush bees. Well, they are a Canadian breed after all. Typical pkg setup, feeder can in the middle, queen cage off center just like every other pkg I've installed.
So the initial process to install is the same: remove the feeder can then remove the queen cage. If you've ever installed a pkg before, you know how imperative it is to get the feeder can off and queen cage out as quickly as possible (when you pop out that feeder can, a volcano of thousands of bees erupts).
The queen cages I've had are a mix between 3-hole, JzBz plastic, and Cali mini cages. This was a California mini, which has a metal strip anchored to the back for hanging the cage between frames. The metal strip even hangs out of the pkg making for easy handling.
When I was removing the queen cage, I broke off the metal strip right where it attaches to the queen cage. No big deal, except the queen cage has now fallen to the bottom of the pkg and I can't really see where it is because there are thousands of bees obscuring my view. I'm now standing over the hive they're going into so I just start gently shaking bees into the box. Shake, shake, shake, senora, work your body line. No queen cage yet, so I shake shake shake that booty some more. After a little more gentle shaking, the cage plops out onto the tops of the frames. Check for a living queen, yep, there she is, none the worse for wear!
It's a good thing I had some drawn out frames, because I was able to smush the cage into the comb and it stuck there (screen side down).

Now it’s time to get the girls some feed!
Did you guys know if you let sugar syrup sit in a bucket for months, it will become moldy and unusable? Well I didn’t. I had to dump about 2.5 gallons of 2:1. That felt just like lighting a ten dollar bill on fire. I had to leave the hive open without a lid for about a half hour while I went to mix up some new 1:1. Normally this isn't a big deal, but I’ve got severe thunderstorm warnings in the area! It’s friggin’ raining all around, but it looks like I’ve got a window. I lucked out and didn’t have anything get wet. I put on the feeder box and lid, and called it an evening.

I released the queen on Saturday (4/20).
With all the queen cages I’ve had in the past (the ones with a wood cork), the bees went ahead and chewed out the cork and released the queen on their own. Not this time, I had to pull it out with some needle nose pliers. I pulled the cork, and then stuck the cage back onto the frame. I tried to watch the queen walk out but she was surrounded, so I put the lid back on and came back about hour later to an empty queen cage. I’ll check them again this Sunday to see about eggs/brood. They were bringing in henbit and dandelion pollen, so hopefully they’ll have some brood soon.