re-united with my bees

[pistolpete]

well, my back is shot, but all my bees have been moved south 300 miles and now reside about 5 minutes down the road on a cattle farm.   The little one's did well for me this year.  I split extensively in the spring and sold a bunch of Nucs.  Then I set up 6 very weak hives with a bunch of supers and let then do their thing for 3 months with only one brief check up.  I would estimate that I will have 300 to 400 lbs of honey when I'm done extracting. 

It was a comical move.  Somewhere along the line of loading 6 honey laden hives into a van 100 feet up hill, I gave up any pretence of screening everything.  So for the whole 5 hour drive back I had bees all over the inside of the van.  Crawling up the windows, sitting on the steering wheel, pooping on my head.  Can't say that I entirely minded.  I'm happy to be re-united with them. 

Tomorrow I will have to pull the supers and in a week or two I get to test drive my new 30 frame maxant extractor.

[Jen]

"Crawling up the windows, sitting on the steering wheel, pooping on my head."

   Hahahahah! I have been there, even just on my way to town. But never on a full on journey like that. Congrats Pete    Glad you and the girls are home safe.

[Perry]

Glad to hear that they are close to you again. The long distance keeping is far from ideal.

[Les]

Please tell me you were wearing a veil while driving?  I would hate the thought of getting stung on the ear while driving!    Good luck with your new location, taking care of them closer to home will be so much easier.

[riverbee]

good to hear from you pete!..........LOL...........funny stuff.......the things we do for bees!

looking forward to an update on that 30 frame maxant!

[pistolpete]

It's looking huge in the garage, I think I want to trade it in for a 20 frame. 

No veil for the drive, the only sting I got was from leaning on one with my elbow.

Checked on the yard today, they were at defcon1.  I don't know if it was from other bees robbing, or from all the confusion of 6 hives all adjusting to new digs and returning to wrong hives.  Maybe it was just the move and having their supers taken away.    But there was a lot of pushing and shoving on the landing boards.   I reduced all the entrances and hope they calm down soon. 

[Perry]

I really like the Maxant 30's, but they are big! I can take my 20 frame Dadant apart (top off, reel out) and carry it up and down the stairs easily by myself. It only takes me a few minutes to completely disassemble it as well. I would buy another in a heartbeat and run 2 of them before I would ever get a bigger extractor.