Picked up and installed my two NUC’s today. Bee’s were very calm and everything went well. I ended up doing it by myself but after reading two books and more posts than I can count on this forum I felt very confident. My son helped me once I got home with the boxes. All of the frames were very full of bees, brood, and nectar. I glanced quickly on a couple of the frames for the queen but did not see her. In the time frame from the drive home until I put them on my stand bee’s were already working on the extra frames in the box. I have enclosed a few pictures.
Thanks again for all the help and advice. I am sure there will be more questions but day one was pretty awesome!
Looking good. One thing, and it may be the photos, push all your frames together and centre them to preserve the bee space. Once the comb is built its OK to spread honey supers a bit but brood should be pushed together.
@Rmcpb I did. I wanted to take a picture of the bees in the chain from one frame to another. I put them back in place correctly before I closed things up.
My son and I did an inspection of the two hives yesterday. In both hives they had one of the three frames I put in with the 5 frames from the NUC about 50% built comb. Saw some young bees but most of the frames still had capped brood. Quite a bit of nectar and pollen on them too. I did not see the queen in either of hives nor did I see any eggs. They had the pollen patties I put in last week over 50% gone. The weather this past week has been cool (40’s to 50’s) with a fair amount of rain. The days the sun was shining there was quite a bit of activity. Lots of bees coming in with full pollen sacs.
The queens were supposed to be marked but if they are the gals are sneaky because I did not see them. In one frame there was what appeared to be a queen cup with a pretty large larvae in it. It was around mid to late afternoon when we did the inspection. At this point I would have loved to see the queen and eggs but since they were all busy building come and bringing in resources I will just wait. If anyone has any advice I am all ears.
