Their here!!!

Moved 3 nucs into their new hives today!!!

Today was the day! I picked up 30,000 bees, tucked into three nucs, and moved them into their new homes. A nuc is basically a starter colony, about 10,000 bees strong — mostly female workers, one queen, and maybe fifty drones mixed in. Each nuc comes packed into a crate with five frames: two filled with honey, and three loaded with eggs, larvae, and capped brood.

It was windy and a little on the cool side, so I had to move fast. There wasn’t much time for videos or photos, but I did grab a few. In one video, you can see some of the worker bees at the hive entrance, fanning their wings like crazy. They’re broadcasting the colony’s unique pheromones, signaling to the foragers in the air where to find their new home.

As I transferred the bees frame by frame from the nucs into their full-sized hives, I kept an eye out for the queens. I spotted the queens in two of the colonies, but the third slipped past me. I’ll give them some time to settle in and warm up before I go back in next weekend for a closer look.