I worked all night Friday night. I got a call Saturday morning around 10:00 from Holcomb's Garden Supply in Chattanooga that my two nucs were in and could I come pick them up. Luckily for me, Dad said he'd go down there and pick them up for me. I was able to go back to sleep for a little while.
I got up around 1:00 in the afternoon and started thinking about what all I needed to do to get the nucs hived. Looked outside and it was pouring rain. Oh boy.
Got two rubber mats to set the hives on, found some cinder blocks (only two per hive, I'll have to get four more next week), bottom boards, deeps, frames, telescoping tops, feeders. Couldn't find any entrance reducers. I've got to come up with a better way to keep track of supplies and inventory! I'll try to swing by the Co-op Monday and pick some up. I've put robber screens on as an interim measure.
Dad showed up with the bees. Two waxy-cardboard-type 5-frame nucs. One nuc had 3-frames and one had four frames. I didn't get to do a detailed inspection because of the cool, rainy weather. But there wasn't any queen cages, so I assume that they're working nucs. Hopefully I'll be able to peek in sometime this coming week and see. There was some burr comb built in the nuc boxes with bees all over it, so I put that wax in the hives. I didn't want to take a chance of missing the queen. I'll have to clean that up when I can get in there.
I put top feeders on the hives and filled all the feeders up yesterday. It may be a couple of days before it stops raining and the bees can get out.
Hopefully everything will be ok.
Nucs before installation:
Nuc leaned up against the hive for stragglers to walk in:
Now I have four hives!
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