BeeWeaver contacted us to let us know we could pick up our bees and hives a couple of weeks early, so yesterday we drove from Houston to Navasota for the order pick up and continued on to Caldwell for the drop off. I'm not going to kid you and say it was an easy day, but I will tell you that it was so exciting and well worth the hard work!
Mark's SUV was filled to the brim with our supplies, hive order, and our four nucs. Danny Weaver helped Mark pack up our order and we had just enough room to place the nucs right behind our seats on top of the supplies. As we were driving onward to Caldwell, we talked about the number of bees in the truck with us. Each nuc included four frames, so we guessed that there were roughly 5,000-6,000 bees per nuc. It was a little unnerving to think we had up to 20,000-24,000 bees behind our heads for a good hour's drive.
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| Here, you can see two of the four nucs stacked upon our supply tubs. |
When we arrived in Caldwell, we set up our hives, which proved to be quick and easy. One special detail that we thought would be helpful was adding numbers to each hive. This will allow us to journal the health of each hive and also differentiate between the hives during general conversation.
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Mark adding the "house" numbers. Notice the nuc situated
on top, ready for installation. |
Each of the hives came as one complete set, that is, a bottom board, a deep hive, ten frames, a top board and a lid.
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This photo was taken as Mark and Danny were loading the truck in Navasota.
You can see three of the deep hives, each with ten frames. |
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| Smoker is lit and nucs are ready to be unloaded. |
At this point, it was time to put on our bee suits and get to the exciting part! It was nearly impossible to take photos with bee suits on and with thousands of bees in our hands. Here are a few photos of the actual installation, which Doug took for us. When we opened the first nuc (01), there were so many bees we couldn't believe they all fit in the nuc. We smoked them downward to be able to grab the frames to remove them and install them into the deep hive.
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| Nuc 01 upon opening. |
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| First frame out of the nuc, here we are hunting for the queen. |
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| Retrieving frames from nuc 01 to place into the deep hive. |
We removed four frames per hive to make room for the four nuc frames full of bees. In addition, we removed two more frames per hive to make room for the container to hold the gallon of sugar water (this container is rectangular and shaped similar to a frame and fits within the hive seamlessly). While swapping out the frames, we looked for the queen in each nuc. Each nuc contains only one queen (hopefully) and it is important to see her upon installation, as well as to notice if she is laying new eggs.
BeeWeaver provides marked queens, which means they are painted with a brightly colored dot on their thorax. In this case, a light blue dot was painted on the queens (a different color each year to easily determine the age of a queen), which we noticed fairly quickly on the queens in nucs 01 and 04. We did not see queens or new eggs in nucs 02 and 03. A hive will not survive without a queen. It is critical that a new queen is introduced into these two hives quickly, which is now our next adventure. Queen installation is fascinating in and of itself!
During installation, the bees remained calm and agreeable. Overall, the hives look great and we think our bees are off to a fine start. Our first day of beekeeping felt so rewarding!
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Hive 04 with installation complete. The concrete block on top will help
to hold the lid in place, keeping the colony safe from pesky predators and severe weather. |
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All four hives with installation complete. Bees are clustering at the bottom board.
Entrance reducers are in place, allowing for five inches for the bees to come and go in and out of the hives.
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| Beekeepers Mark and Nicki. |
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