So Monday we drove to Iowa city to pick up three bee nucs. Nucs are little started colonies of bees, 5 frames in a box. It ended up being a wild 2+ hour return hour journey, as the new boxes didn't actually seal well, and, as it turns out, Donna's car trunk is not bee proof! We stopped once to use cloth grocery bags to stuff up the tiny bee-sized gaps around the back seat, and once to beg trash bags from a gas station attendant to try to wrap up the leaky boxes. Neither attempt worked too well, so mostly we drove home with a lot of bees in the car. Fortunately, there were very calm and mellow bees and we actually had no problems. The picture shows what the trunk looked like when we got to the farm!
The first nuc we installed at a friend's farm outside Woodward. These lucky bees have acres of woodland and natural prairie to feed on.
The second hive now lives at Twin Girls Garden in Madrid, Iowa, where they will pollenate Paula's organic vegetables :)
The third went to Raccoon Forks Farm in Redfield, also to pollenate organic veggies :)
We then inspected our three hives at Plh. Our two overwintered hives look very healthy!
The swarm we caught two weeks ago is also robust, but is building some unusual comb. Hmm, what to do?
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2 comments:
That is some interesting comb.. it looks like it's full of babies. Maybe let them build? :)
I think that's what we're gonna let them do, Becky. They've made fabulous progress in just two weeks, and I'd hate to set them back. Plus this is THEIR comb, we won't be harvesting it, why not just let them make it however they want?
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