The farm’s (my) bee experiment last year was a total failure. Early this spring, two nuks were ordered from a local beekeeper, member of the same organization I joined for help. Son 2 who started this adventure on our farm, picked up all of the deep boxes and frames to expand his hives where he lives. Because of my age, strength, and a recently ruptured bicep, I decided to work only with medium boxes and frames. This morning, I received a text saying my bees were ready to pick up and could I come today. That wasn’t a problem, the graduation ceremony at the University was very early today, so traffic was not as bad as the last few days.
We picked them up, put them in the cool garage, and went to take our walk. Once home, equipment was gathered, the boxes set up on the stands with the bottoms in place. The new spacers and entrance reducers were installed, the extra frames that would be needed to fill in the five from the nuk were put in place and finally, donned the very hot bee jacket with veil and gloves. The nuk boxes were opened and bees transferred to their new homes. The nuks were much better than the ones we started with last year, lots of bees, lots of capped brood, and two good frames of stores.
They will be left to settle in for a couple of weeks, then I will examine them and make sure that all is well. The locust and basswood trees are in full bloom right now, so nectar flow should be good and hopefully, there will be greater success this year.
Again, I will try to be a beekeeper.