It’s official. I’m a beekeeper!

Today I arrived at 7:00 am to pick up my bees at A-Z Supply in Grass Valley. I purchased two nucs which are miniature bee hives used to start a new colony.

 

 This is a selfie of me in the bee yard ready to install the new nucs.

 

This is my smoker. My first attempt to light it failed miserably so I watched a YouTube video and got it working just right!

 

On the left are two empty hives and the two nuc boxes are on the right. As you can see in the front hive, I’ve removed five frames to make room for the new frames of bees.

 

As I slowly lifted the lid of the nuc box I puffed some smoke inside to calm the bees. This is what it looks like to open a nuc. A nuc is a small “nucleus hive.” They usually contain five frames and come with a mated queen and about 10,000 bees. The queen has already begun laying eggs and the worker bees have begun drawing out comb and storing pollen and nectar.

 

This is the bees new home.

 

Here is my new hive! It’s amazing how different the two hives already are. One hive is considerably heavier than the other. The heavy hive’s five frames has much more drawn out comb and already has capped honey and pollen. I saw little larva in the honeycomb, but did not see any eggs. I’m sure they were there, I just don’t quite know what I’m looking for…and they are very tiny. I feel fortunate to have spotted both queens. They are about twice as big as the regular worker bees and have very long narrow abdomens. I also saw several drones, which are male bees. They are also larger than worker bees and have bodies shaped like bullets and very large eyes on top of their heads.