If I was a cigarette smoker, I guess this would have been the perfect time to puff and ponder over my little white hive. At least in my head, it would have been some romanticized image; like the Marlboro man on horseback-puffing trails of smoke as he watched over his herd from a grassy bluff...Except, I scarcely had a herd to watch over. I wasn't going to submit to failure: I needed to get this operation to work, and I needed to do something about it now. I could buy a new Queen and have her here in about 2 days. But, the amount of work that they needed to accomplish in building the strength of the hive-before the Fall set in? The odds were against them for survival. The next best thing to make up for my lost time was to buy a nucleus hive or a "Nuc". Beekeepers create Nucs by using an existing Queen and her workers and sell them as a package. They are sold with 3 to 5 frames of their mini hive which consist of an equally balanced proportion of honey, pollen and capped brood (cells containing eggs and emerging workers) and the promise of a successful hive. These honey bees already function as a family; committed to their Queen and her brood. So, transplanting them from their small Nuc box, to a larger hive, only adds to their expansion and production.
As the bumpy roads bordered by Dairy farms and rolling acres of corn traversed to smooth pavement greeted by small vacation towns on channeled waterways, the entire drive home from The Farm was consumed with my thoughts. Is it too late to get in on buying a Nuc? ...Most of these are pre-ordered months ago. Maybe I could email around?...I had maybe three connections at the most, to guide me. As I pulled into our driveway, and placed the truck into park, I felt no impulsion to move from the leather driver's seat; I was glued by a mixture of concentration and anxiety. I ended my thoughts with, "You need to get on this now" and promptly jumped out of the truck and headed into the house, leaving my Beek equipment settled in the back.
Two days later, I found myself pulling out of my driveway at 7:00 AM, with sleepy kids in tow, and a full cup of to-go coffee, on an hour and a half journey to the Kettle Moraine area of Wisconsin to pick up my Nuc. Once I had the Nuc safely nestled in a plastic bin the back of the truck, I programmed the navigation on my smart phone to take me directly to The Farm. I had a time crunch to deal with, but the Beekeeper gave me plenty of advice to act on, and I wasn't going to let an ounce of it slip away to time. The transfer from Nuc to hive went smoothly, as I carefully placed frames thickly laden with Italian honey bees into their new home. Lucky for me, I had easily found the Queen on the brood frame, as she was busily tending to her business. On the outside frames of the hive, the original stranded bees had surprised me with their lackluster movement; meandering around in circles as if they were hopelessly melancholy without a Queen. Upon learning of my situation, the Wisconsin Beek was concerned about the stragglers, and he advised me before to just merge the two hives immediately.
As a precaution for a few days, I stapled insect screening to the front entrance of the hive, with a small access opening large enough for workers, but not the Queen. I studied my work, and concluded that this was IT for the year. If it works, it works. If not, well...if you fall off the horse, you always get back on...but never without a lesson learned.
Cheers!
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