It’s 2:00 in the afternoon, 88 degrees, and almost all the preparations are in place for the first load of bees and the truck load of nucs for Wisconsin. All of the five-fram nucs have been assembled and are out in pastures still working a light gallberry honey flow. This season’s swamp honeys (palmetto, holly and gallberry) have all come in staggered and late, but that’s really working in our favor as we have had absolutely no robbing this season in our cell yard or in any of the mating nuc yards.
The five-frame nucs that we’re hauling to Wisconsin are some of the best I think we’ve ever made. All of the factors that play a role in getting the nucs ripe at the right time really fell into place well this spring. There are 324 nucs on the truck when we leave at 7:00a.m. tomorrow morning. It’s a real balancing act getting them strong enough to be pleasing to the customers when they open them Saturday, but not so strong that they over heat on the trip up. We load before sunrise and take off and drive during the hottest part of the day in the sunny south and some people wonder why we don’t leave at night when it’s cooler. The reason is simple. It’s better to let the nucs open on the ground cooling all night from the previous hot afternoon and load them up at their coolest and take off with them than it would be to load them at night when they are still working hard to cool down from the previous day. We’ve been doing this now for more than 20 years. Sure, there’s still hick-ups along the way, but we’ve gotten a lot of the bugs worked out of the process of making the nucs, loading the nucs, and hauling the nucs.
Becky and I actually install each nuc into the cardboard transporting boxes. Our team of kids are working ahead of us caging the queens and marking each nuc’s cover to indicate if it had 2 or 3 three-framed nucs (these are all of our mating nucs for the winter). When Becky and I come along, we’re quickly able to assemble five frames of bees and brood with at least one frame of feed into each cardboard box. In most cases, the queen is left free-roaming on her combs. She’s marked by the time the customer gets the nuc, the boys do that when they assess the nucs ahead of Becky and I. If they cage the queen for us, then we can really move fast. If they do their jobs several days ahead of us, they leave the queen running free for us to find, but at least she’s marked.
We also at this time bring up the apple pollination bees. They are strong story-and-a-half hives. We’ll haul 200 of those on the trailer behind the truck. I’m really glad to arrive to the cooler weather in Wisconsin and get a break from the heat that’s just beginning to gather for the summer here in Florida. I’m not sure how the bees feel about it. Like I said, it has been in the high 80’s all week and 60’s at night. It’s a big temperature change for the hives to arrive to 40’s and 50’s, but when they hit the ground and see all the dandelions that are posed to bloom, they forgive me. The first semi-load of bees will be loaded and sent north on Tuesday with one load a week following until all five of loads have made it to Wisconsin hopefully before Memorial day or shortly thereafter.
The next time I write the blog will probably be over the phone with Jennifer. She and Caleb will trade places with me in two weeks, me back to Florida and they back to Wisconsin for the summer. The transition or migration to Wisconsin takes a full month and is very fluid and full of change. Not at all like it was 30 years ago when it was just Becky and I and 1,200 hives. I’ll let you know next week how things are going in Wisconsin.
We will also be posting a nuc installation video today to help with installation for the “newbees”.