Apiary Expansion

I promised a long post and this one is sure going to be. Thursday of last week Jake and I drove 6 hours (round trip) to pick up some bees. We decided on 3 nuc's which are small pre-started hives for example:

A nuc (pronounced nuke) looks like this: Sometimes wood, though the ones we got were a waxed cardboard container with 5 frames of bees, brood, honey, pollen and a queen. A mini, already started, ready to go hive.

A box of bees looks like this: Roughly 3 pounds of bees and a queen. No babies, honey or any pre-started frames. (Below picture is from our bee install spring 2010)

So 3 nuc's, which means we'll now have 3 hives instead of just the one. Last year we had ordered 2 boxes of bee's but only one stayed, the other swarmed. But I digress...


The weather was lovely, much nicer than the weather we left back in Cheney. On our way we drove as close as I've ever come to commercial wind towers. Often they are quite a way's away on top of some distant hill top but instead we drove right by them.

The directions from Google were wrong but we only got lost once, and thankfully got it all figured out. The drive down was uneventful but coming back was nerve wracking. Our car has no trunk, so the girls were right there in the car with us. Trying to think ahead I brought a giant green rubermaid tub with us in which to place the nucs. Only one fit.
















The others were wrapped in 2 garbage sack's and a large blanket respectively.  Well of course some got out! How else would the adventure with 60,000+ bees in the back of an open car go!? Jacob spent about half of the trip with his bee jacket on. It's especially scary since I've never been stung and don't have any idea if I am allergic. Being in the middle of freaking nowhere with that many stinging creatures makes for lots of adrenaline. We only had to stop once just to adjust the blankets and tubs, and thankfully neither of us got stung.

We got home around 2:30pm jacked up and ready to get these girls out of the car. The install went smooth because it was mostly a matter of taking the frames out of the nuc and placing them into the hive.

All of the hives had a good population, we saw capped brood and lots of pollen. The only downside to buying bee's this way is the frames. The frames have a plastic foundation that dictates what size the bee's can make the cells, all our frames from last year are foundationless meaning we let the bee's draw out the comb as nature intended. We get smaller bee's but overall they are healthier.

This frame in the middle left side or upper right shows the foundation it's a yellow color. We intend to slowly faze these out, our girls go au naturel.

Our master beekeeper has a lab where he tests your bees from trachea mites to nosema, so we took samples. He needs 100 bees to test to get an average, collecting 100 writhing bees in a mason jar is no easy task. So Jim (master beekeeper) came up with the measurement, 1 inch of bees in the bottom of a mason jar roughly translates to 100 bees. So our 3 hives 100 test subjects are with Jim now and we should know something by early next week. Hopefully we'll get a clean bill of health.

We moved our bee yard to the back of the garden so that the hives will get more year round sun. It used to rest on the west side of the house which goes into shade around 2 pm. In the new location they'll get sun until roughly 6-7 pm. A considerable difference we hope helps in the long run. Jacob also redesigned and built some long Langstroth hive's, essentially all 20 frames of a traditional hive rest horizontally instead of rising vertically by stacking extra boxes on top. Similar to a top bar style hive, only with frames not just a top bar.

I went outside this afternoon and saw a major orientation flight in session. Orientation flights help the newly hatched or inside bee's figure out where there hive is in space and in relation to the sun. It's quiet impressive to watch.

See how they are all facing the hive, might need to make it bigger to tell. But regardless they are checking out the new digs. We also give our hives an address to help them locate the correct hive, so we've got "dots" and "stripes" hives. I know it doesn't look it in the picture but they face opposite directions. Dots faces east and stripes faces west. It's best if the hive faces east toward sunrise, but we didn't have the room to place them side by side.

Here's a video I took of orientation flights, it's only 40 seconds long.