The Bees at the Longshaw Estate
On Tuesday 15th June 2010 the bees for the BBC Sheffield hive arrived at the National Trust Longshaw estate.
The bees were transported by courier from Devon and arrived at the estate in a wooden crate called a nucleus box.
The box contained five frames and inside were between 10 and 20,000 honey bees.
BBC Sheffield's bee buddy Kim Schofield and his wife Freda were on hand to ensure the smooth transfer of the bees into the hive.
"If the foraging is good, in a week or so we should have 30-40,000 bees," said Kim.
The first job was to make sure that the bees were acclimatised to their surroundings, so the nucleus box was left next to the beehive for an hour for the bees to fly out.
The apiary at Longshaw Estate
The next stage was to open the box in which they had been transported and to carefully place the frames containing the bees into the hive.
Once the box was opened, smoke was blown around the hive to calm the bees down.
As the frames came out of the transporter box, Kim looked to see if he could find the queen bee: "The Queen is the biggest bee and is usually marked with a little spot to signify the year. Sometimes the others cluster around so it makes her hard to see," Kim said.
The BBC Sheffield hive is one of three hives in the apiary at Longshaw and it is hoped that the bees will feed off the heather which surrounds the estate.
Volunteers on the estate are also working on a Victorian kitchen garden which is hoped will provide food for the bees.
You can follow the progress of the bees with Rony Robinson on BBC Radio Sheffield and on this website.