Attack of the 50 Foot Bug

Transfer of nuc into my bee hive complete April 13, 2010

Yesterday, was nerve-racking. I was able to transfer the bees into my hive late in the afternoon. This was my first time doing this and luckily I was able observe someone going through the process earlier in the day. This provided a huge boost to my confidence. The good news is that everything appeared to go okay and I didn’t get stung. The stung part occurred later in the evening.

The hive, in my opinion, seemed really strong and healthy. The nuc that I bought had five frames in it. It’s essentially a small starter hive which contains brood, pollen, honey, and lots of bees. If you want to quickly get up to speed with the production of honey, a nuc (nucleus of bees) is the best route to take.

I already have one concern. The bees don’t seem interested in the sugar syrup feeder. It may not be that big of deal though. There’s quite a bit of flowering plants available right now and the bees do ultimately prefer that over the provided sugar-water. Nevertheless, I’m going to redo the sugar-water mixture and see if anything changes tomorrow.

The bees were quickly able to find and start using a small bird bath that I provided for water. My neighbor across the street is getting a new pool installed and I want to prevent them from gathering water over there, if at all possible. I’ve found that taking pictures of bees gathering water is a lot easier than trying to photograph them on flowers. They tend to linger longer at the bird bath. A bee will usually spend a few seconds in a flower which is barely enough time to get set up. This picture was taken using a Nikon D300, a 50mm f1.8 lens and a full set of extension tubes.