Well, the spring weather here in Maryland was a lot colder and wetter than usual. My bee supplier (prudently) pushed back the delivery date on my NUC from April 1st to April 14th. The 14th turned out to be a nice day for transferring the NUC to my hive box. Kevin had taken the precaution of capturing the queen and placing her in a plastic queen cage rubber banded to one of the frames. This minimized the chances of damaging her while transporting the bees and getting them into the hive. THis was a real nice touch.
All of the frames in the NUC were fairly well covered by bees. Mostly, these looked to be younger nurse bees. I set the entrance to a small two bee wide opening and started moving my minions to their new home. The foragers were ready to start to work immediately and the front of the hive was busy with orientation flights.
I was able to get a few extra frames of built out comb from my supplier at a very reasonable price. This made it possible to start with two deep hive bodies, the lower all in built out comb and the upper with half of the frames in comb and the other half with bare foundation.
In the rush to get the NUC moved over, I didn’t do a real close inspection of each of the frames. I wish I had, because the weather hasn’t been too conducive to getting back in for another look.
The plan for next weekend is to closely inspect the hive and if things look good to add honey supers. The extra built out comb frames could make this work out for me.