Friday, June 3, 2016: The Bee Teacher arrived early early this morning. We carried a super full nuc down to the bee yard. Then we wrapped a strap around Fig Hive. Next came the hive carrier---it looks like a strapless camp chair. Aftr turning it over about 8 times trying to figure out which way was up, we successfully loaded the hive and carried it up to the Bee Teacher's car.
She'll bring the hive body and the five (basically) empty frames back this afternoon and we'll install the nuc.
Lesson I learned today: having enough frames at the moment does you no good when you need to add boxes.
To Do: order a bunch of frames so I'm prepared for hive growth.
Much later in the day...................
The Bee Teacher came back this afternoon with the hive body, bottom board, frames, and covers. I had the smoker ready to go (I think I finally have the hang of lighting it!. We got into our bee costumes and headed down.
The nuc really was packed! There was honey dripping from the frames, literally. We found the queen and safely installed her frame. It was so full, the Bee Teacher suggested putting and empty frame in between two frames filled with capped brood--one of which the queen was running around on. Everything went with out a hitch, except that I forgot to take down the powdered sugar to dust onto the bees to knock of varroa mites.
Fig Hive is back on track!
She'll bring the hive body and the five (basically) empty frames back this afternoon and we'll install the nuc.
Lesson I learned today: having enough frames at the moment does you no good when you need to add boxes.
To Do: order a bunch of frames so I'm prepared for hive growth.
Much later in the day...................
The Bee Teacher came back this afternoon with the hive body, bottom board, frames, and covers. I had the smoker ready to go (I think I finally have the hang of lighting it!. We got into our bee costumes and headed down.
The nuc really was packed! There was honey dripping from the frames, literally. We found the queen and safely installed her frame. It was so full, the Bee Teacher suggested putting and empty frame in between two frames filled with capped brood--one of which the queen was running around on. Everything went with out a hitch, except that I forgot to take down the powdered sugar to dust onto the bees to knock of varroa mites.
Fig Hive is back on track!