2011-05-15: Third Time's a Pain

Sunday the 15th was my day to pick up the nuc from Northwoods Apiary to make my third hive. After a lot of driving and some frustration with having left a box of frames behind I got the nuc to my parents' place around noon. I decided to go ahead and move the frames into their new home as there was some concern that they could start to feel cramped before my next visit and start to swarm. Since it was cold and raining I decided to once again use the covered porch to do the work so that the bees would be out of the rain while they settle in. I suited up and placed a small strip of burlap into the smoker since this was going to be a short job. A little puff of smoke came out of the smoker and I proceeded to puff some into the hive. I then started to unscrew the screws holding down the top lid. When I got it off I tried to give the hive another few puffs. The smoker refused to produce anything more than an anemic trickle, not enough to quell the growing irritation of the hive. I tried lighting the burlap again, adding some paper, and finally added another piece of burlap to finally manage to get a nice big puff of smoke. By which time some bees had started to head butt my veil. A minute's work and the frames were moved. A good portion of the bees stayed in the box, probably because a dinner plate sized chunk of comb had been built in the extra space in the nuc box. I placed the empty box at the entrance and hoped they would figure it out. I also hoped that the queen had been on the frame and was not sitting in that pile of bees in the box.

Other news. A few days before this my hives had been visited by the State Bee Inspector, Steve Parise. He had noted V mites in both hives, no surprise there really. He also spotted European Foulbrood in the new hive (ie the first nuc, or hive #2 after this day's addition). He said that others in that shipment of nucs from Louisiana had had EFB and that it should clear up on its own with warmer weather and a nectar flow. If not I could re-queen. I should also reverse the boxes in Artemis again to try to prevent swarming since I did it so early in the year, if I do so I will probably take that opportunity to move the yellow deep box out and replace it with a green one since I would like one color per hive. I also probably jumped the gun by putting a few supers on top Artemis. Oh well.