The Bees Knees

Last year I had one hive. It did fairly well and I was able to get 6 pints of honey from that one hive. It was a season of learning and growing as a hobby bee keeper. Sadly my hive swarmed in mid September.

A few months ago I got in touch with an apiary that was looking into downsizing their work production and sell some of their bees. I was eager to help them out. I bought 5 Nucs from them. The Nucs would eventually be full blown hives if the queen and colony was strong.

These are the Nucs ready to make the trip to their new home. A Nuc is a smaller hive of 5 frames. It is a great place to start when there is need to split a colony or when several queen cells are being produced.

 

Here the Nucs are on top of the hives they will be moved to. As you can see there is a lot of activity. Some of the bees are already checking out the hives they will move into.

They certainly are busy.

The bees transitioned quite nicely into their new home. I have had them for about 2.5 months. One hive has already swarmed. I am not sure why, but it could have been a sick, injured, or absent queen. 

I have been checking them for activity about every 2 weeks to make sure the queens are laying lots of eggs. So far so good. It looks like they are doing well. I am keeping my fingers crossed since bees can be hit or miss.

I am hoping the other 4 remain with me and give me lots of lessons and lots of honey.