Hive # 2 - Green

I got a call mid-week from Janina telling me that my Nuc was ready. She had created one and was letting it gain some strength. So last night my wife and I went to her house and picked it up (see picture above). The nuc has 5 frames in it, and the bees were very active, which is a good thing. I set the nuc on the hive stand last night, to be transferred to the new full-size hive this morning.

So I got all of the equipment for the new hive together this morning and did a frame transplant. I took the 5 frames out of the nuc, and put them in my 10-frame brood box. You can see from this frame how nicely the bees are doing, with capped brood:



I moved those frames to the 10-frame brood box, then I added 5 new (empty) frames. Here's what things looked like after the transfer:


You can see the new frames surrounding the 5 existing frames. While I was transferring the frames, I didn't see the queen, but when I got done, I didn't see any bees clustering in the old box, so I think she went with the frames. I closed it up, and put on a jar of sugar syrup to start feeding it.

Then I moved on to my current (brown) hive. While I was inspecting it, the bees seemed to be very aggressive and agitated. I got stung on the outside of my right hand (the fleshy part!), and I wasn't doing anything too bad. I think that the bees were robbing the green hive and were fighting a little (I hadn't put down the robbing screen yet).

The bees hadn't done anything (yet again) in the honey super, so I ended up taking it off. I had also added some new frames to the hive last week, and there wasn't any evidence of even a desire to build some comb. I'm not sure what I have to do to get the bees to build comb - it may be a little late in the season.

I also was a little worried because I didn't see the queen. I also didn't notice any eggs, but I could have missed them (because of the agitated bees). I don't know what could have happened to the queen, but I hope the hive isn't queenless again (being queenless also makes the bees more agitated). So I'll have to watch the hive and see next week if I see any eggs. If I don't, I'll probably go ahead and buy a queen, since I don't want to wait for the creation of a new one.

So, life goes on in the hive. I hope with 2 hives I can use one to help the other when needed.

Oh, here's what my bee yard looks like now. You can see the robber screen on the front of the hive (held there by a pink cord and a bungee cord).