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How to Populate a Bee Box

Bee boxes are homes for bees. Manmade bee hives are built to resemble boxes with frames for the bees to build their honeycomb. Populating a bee box correctly helps the bees become accustomed to the box. The faster the bees feel at home in the box, the faster they will start pollinating your crops and making honey. There are several ways to get bees for a bee box. If you have a wild hive infringing on a populated area, you can harvest the bees into a cardboard box and move them to the new box. Look at the bees carefully when boxed and separate the queen. Place the queen in a smaller wire cage with marshmallows. Purchased bees will have the queen packaged separately.

Things You'll Need

1 cup sugar
12-ounce spray bottle
Protective clothing
Bee hood
6-inch wire
Miniature marshmallows

Instructions

- 1
  Pour the sugar into the spray bottle and fill the bottle with water.
- 2
  Don protective clothing and a bee hood.
- 3
  Spray the bees with the sugar water. This calms them and encourages them to walk rather than fly.
- 4
  Open the top of a Langstroth box. For a Warre' box, open the bottom of the hive. For a top bar bee box, remove two or three bars from the box. the Lanstroth and Warre' boxes are both square bee boxes. The Langstroth stacks multiple boxes to build a larger home for bees. The Warre' is a simple square box that is sealed closed on top. The top bar bee box is a rectangluar bee box.
- 5
  Open the bee container. Remove the queen cage and pour the bees into the hive.
- 6
  Check the queen cage for food. If the queen cage has no food, place two or three marshmallows into the cage to feed the queen.
- 7
  Turn the Warre' box right side up. Hang the queen cage inside the box near the top. Her presence keeps the bees in the new box. The rest of the bees will continue to serve her while she is caged.
- 8
  After three days, release the queen into the box.

Insects & Science