Day 1

Day1.

The Nucs are ready, at last!

A poor queen mating season has meant the nucs are a month later than anticipated. The clover is bursting everywhere and we have had no bees to work it, what a waste.

We took a scenic drive to pickup the nucs from Kereru, what a magnificent view.

Site chosen

 

 

 

 We left nucs on their new bases overnight to let the bees settle down. A cover was placed over them and the entrance unplugged.

Bursting to get out

 By morning the bees were obviously keen to explore their new home. One box appeared a lot more active than the other. I worried that the entrance was blocked as I could not see any bee exiting so lifted the roof a little to allow some air.

Unpacking

 

 

I needn't have worried, the box was full of happy bees.

 

 

 

Find the queen

 As we transferred the frames from the nuc box to the hive box we checked each frame for the queen. The queen is not marked but was not difficult to spot.

 

 

Second box

 The second box had more bees than the first. We carefully transferred these frames to the new hive having spotted the queen easily again.

We'll leave them be for a week before opening the hive again.

In the rush to get them settled I didn't really examine the frames as much as I would have liked to, maybe next week.