Poly Hive
Queen Bee
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2008
- Messages
- 14,097
- Reaction score
- 401
- Location
- Scottish Borders
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 12 and 18 Nucs
Pictures to follow.
I had a very interesting time last night hiving, or is it nucing 5 packages?
This was a first for me, never (obviously) having done this before.
Given that they were kept for me rather longer than was perhaps wise they were in very good condition, and for sure are brood disease free...lol... thanks Mike for a *expletive avoided* good buy.
The packages came inside a very sturdy wooden frame some 4 feet long. Luckily my car has a neat seat fold down arrangement and they just fitted in.
I treated them like a swarm, and the box assisted handily acting as a funnel. I gave them a sharp rap so they fell off the roof and were on the bottom and then poured them into the Nuc boxes. The one difficulty I had was with the queen cages as they had stored some feed in the comb built around her. This made my gloves verra slippy to pull off the top of the cage to expose the candy. All the queens were found to be alive: and hopefully well.
I am intrigued to see how long it takes them to come into lay as they have been confined for some 8 days
All in all a good experience and I will post up some pics from the lappie as this tower has issues with USB ports.
I am intending giving the packages a frame of brood at least if not two to get them off to a faster start.
PH
I had a very interesting time last night hiving, or is it nucing 5 packages?
This was a first for me, never (obviously) having done this before.
Given that they were kept for me rather longer than was perhaps wise they were in very good condition, and for sure are brood disease free...lol... thanks Mike for a *expletive avoided* good buy.
The packages came inside a very sturdy wooden frame some 4 feet long. Luckily my car has a neat seat fold down arrangement and they just fitted in.
I treated them like a swarm, and the box assisted handily acting as a funnel. I gave them a sharp rap so they fell off the roof and were on the bottom and then poured them into the Nuc boxes. The one difficulty I had was with the queen cages as they had stored some feed in the comb built around her. This made my gloves verra slippy to pull off the top of the cage to expose the candy. All the queens were found to be alive: and hopefully well.
I am intrigued to see how long it takes them to come into lay as they have been confined for some 8 days
All in all a good experience and I will post up some pics from the lappie as this tower has issues with USB ports.
I am intending giving the packages a frame of brood at least if not two to get them off to a faster start.
PH
