Feb 26, 2009 - 8:35am

Received a phone call this morning from a friend of mine, that the nucs we ordered arrived!

I ordered one nuc and Gene ordered two nucs.

The nucs were ordered from K & M Bees out of Lake Placid Florida.

They were shipped Monday of this week via USPS. They were shipped with just enough water/food for the three day trip.

Once we finished putting Gene's "nuc" packages in standard hives we drove out to where I keep my bees and put my "nuc" bees in a standard hive.

Surprisingly there were not many dead bees in the nucs, maybe 20-40 per box.

I started feeding the "nuc" bees a 2:1 sugar water mix to get them going. I will feed them that ratio for a few days then feed them a 1:1 mix.

I also put a 1:1 mix of sugar water on the old hive, since they seem to be consuming the mix for now.

After a week I will open the hive and check on the new bees and see how well they are doing.

This weekend, weather permitting, I would like to "fog" the old hive to start dealing with the varroa and trachial mite situation.

I'm still thinking of a naming convention for the hives since I have two hives. For now though, the old hive is the georgia hive and the new hive is the florida hive, since thats where each supplier resides.

I'll post pics later...