Nuc them all!

Well just before the end of Bee School Kevin had done some searching and managed to source some Nucleus Hives from Merrimack Valley Apiaries http://www.mvabeepunchers.com/index.html out in Billerica, MA.

For those who don't know, a Nucleus hive is essentially a small colony of Bee's with a queen, workers Bee's and 4 or so frames of brood contained in a makeshift wooden box.

The other choice being a package of Bee's. Packages consisting of an empty box (no frames=no brood) and a queen bee in a small cage and 3lbs or so of accompanying Bee's.

We had chosen Nucelus hives as these would give us a head start on a package of Bees, with the frames and everything drawn out we felt it would simply be a matter of transferring our frames into our new hives on arrival.

Well Kevin placed the order, with each package coming in at a wopping total of $75.00 (not really that expensive) and so we looked forward to a call to say a truck had come up from Georgia with our Bee's on the back... Bee's coming from Georgia would of course mean they would have a deep southern drawl :)

I had chosen to go with the Italian strain of Honey Bee (Apis mellifera ligustica), they are known for developing their colonies rapidly, the disadvantage being they don't usual stop this growth if there is a shortage in the nectar flow. The Bee also has a fairly light color and is know is be of a particularly docile nature. Both positive traits seemed attractive to me, my wanting to see my hive develop radiply and also not get stung.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_bee

Kevin went with the Carniolan Honey Bee (Apis mellifera carnica), known for being more conservative in colony growth with the flow of nectar. These bee's also exhibit a darker color. These Bees are also considered to be gentle and are thought to have a better sense of direction than their Italian counterparts, but are more prone to swarming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carniolan_honey_bee

After waiting some weeks (read Monday the 14th May) Kevin and I drove over to Billerica to pick our Nuces.

We arrived on a cool evening at Merrimack Valley Apiaries to find a smal handful of people queued up to pick up their Bee's.

The Apiary seemed like a typical small farm and on pulling in we could see several Nuce boxes strewn around a small roughly mown field. These boxes were eagerly being attended to by 3 or 4 Mexicans? busily working away in their bee suites, whilst an American lady shouted directions at them in Spanish as she crossed off orders on her check board.

I guess Kevin and I had forgotten that Beekeeping was a form of farming and I think we were expecting the Nucleus Hives to be beautifully dovetailed boxes finely finished in a shiny lacquer - well not quite, but somewhere in between. The boxes being handled we made of thin plywood in various states and was clearly stapled and screwed together. If this was farming then fair enough we thought.

It was interesting to see people taking their Bee's with a look of delight on their faces. One man even had a few Bee's escape in the back of his car prior to pulling out - lucky we thought, so Kevin left the hatch up on the back of his Jeep; this was our failsafe procedure to eject the Bees out of the rear window if any should escape on the drive home.

Kevin was kind enough to drop me off at my house with my Nuc and I could hear the Bee's bubbling away like pop rocks and soda - they clearly don't like travelling much, but who would after being couped up with a few thousand friends in a box.