Let the Competition Beegin!

Whoa, I had an exciting evening of beekeeping. We decided to have two hives, so now Matt thinks we are competing with our hives. I'm not sure about how we calculate the "winner." My bees were delivered to the apiary supply store today, so Matt, who has more flexibility at work went and picked them up on his way home. They'd been in their nuc box for 3 days already and the people at the store said we should hive them as soon as we could. We were thinking of waiting until Saturday after I got off from work but that seemed like a long time. The weather was going to be rainy today, Thursday and Friday but nice on Saturday, but I figured we had better just hive them now. It wasn't raining and it was 60 degrees, no time like the present. I wouldn't get home until 6:15 so Matt prepared all my things I would need and made some more sugar syrup to be ready for when I got home. We would be cutting it close as it was getting late in the day.

I decided to wear my bee costume (as I like to call it) and Matt was on video duty. I guess I could have just opened the box and set it into the hive and let them crawl out but I decided to do the dump and shake method. My bees seemed much more clingy than Matt's did. They were crawling all over me! But then right, and I mean RIGHT after the bees were mostly in, it started pouring, and I mean POURING rain. There was drama at the hive because some of the bees were getting soaked and so we quickly put a board up to umbrella the entrance and the nuc box. Quite a few bees decided to stay in the box because the weather was so crazy, so when it let up, Matt opened it up and encouraged them into the hive. They crawled into the hive one after the other. (See video at the bottom). I hope they didn't get too cold and wet.

The video cut off at the end but I put the last frame in, put the top feeder on and then the top on with no squished bees!