I picked up a nuc of Carniolan bees from Bee Havin’ Apiary in Smithfield, RI on Sunday. These bees went into the third hive, a standard Langstroth. This hive is called Felix because the other hive is called Oscar. Not much choice in the name 🙂
Once home, I let the bees sit on top of the hive in the closed nuc box for an hour or so, per the advice of Everett at Behavin’. After cooling off, the bees were easy to move from the nuc into their new home. I continue to use a sprayer with 1:1 syrup with a couple drops of wintergreen essential oil instead of the smoker. One sting so far while installing and inspecting three hives, so I don’t think I am going to start smoking them any time soon.
Bottom to top Felix consists of the following hive parts:
- Cypress hive stand.
- Screened bottom board.
- Hive body with 5 frames from the nuc and five foundation-less frames, waxed with melted beeswax. The nuc came with foundation frames. I will rotate these out over time and end up purely foundation-less.
- Shim constructed to act as an entrance.
- Dadant Top feeder fastened inside a medium super with 1:1 syrup and homemade Honey B Healthy. This feeder does not expose the syrup openly to the bees. Hopefully there won’t be as many drownings with this one
- Inner cover – this doesn’t do much except keep me from misplacing an inner cover.
- Garden top cover
Cardbox nucleus box with the new bees.
Opened nuc with dusting of powdered sugar to knock down possible Varroa mites
First frame in the hive
Side shot of a nuc frame in the hive
All stacked up and ready to go
Felix Post-install from John Duncan on Vimeo.
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