The bees came tonight! My mentor drove to Vermont today to collect them from Singing Cedars Apiary, in Orwell, Vermont. Singing Cedars sells nucleus colonies for $148: a laying queen with 5 frames of bees in a box, ready to drop into my hive. Singing Cedars raises their own queens from survivor stock, and the bees are all "field bred" hybrids of northern survivor stock--hardy enough to make it through New England winters.
 |
| photo from Singing Cedars |
Julien showed up at close to 11 pm with all the nucs on a trailer behind his car. My husband Ken had rigged a worklight out on the hive, and we suited up and lit the smoker. It was odd to do all this at night, but also necessary: the sooner they got in the hive, the better. We lifted the frames in while the bees hummed frantically, and put the top on right away. The bees were mad, and my adrenaline was through the roof. SO exciting.
We knocked as many bees as we could from the box into the hive, but there were still quite a few left--so I left the box propped in front of the hive. The next morning there was a quivering bolus of bees in one corner of the hive, but by the afternoon they had all gone inside.
No comments:
Post a Comment