We bought a house a while back and after a bunch of work it was ready to move into. Got most of the stuff in, but the trickiest part happened early this morning.
The ladies were happy on the front porch of the old place, but the people we were renting from were not nearly as happy about the location.
We got up about 3am today so we would have all the ladies at home, catching up on their beauty sleep. After achieving an acceptable level of caffienation, we departed new place for old. We arrived to find the ladies blissfully taking their rest:
I had reached out to the local beekeeping club for advice and many people stepped up and offered tips, notably (in no particular order) Mark, Noah, Bill, and Bill. The water mist made the bearded ladies move inside, assisted by a light application of the bee brush. Closed the entrances with entrance reducers that I had stapled screen on so there would bee ventilation. Strapped the hives together with ratchet straps.
The hives were on boxes I had built The trailer was backed up to the sidewalk, and the dolly easily picked up the hives on the boxes, allowing me to wheel them over to the trailer without any drama. The boxes were exactly the right height to slide the hives onto the trailer. The 2 larger hives are probably close to 125 lbs each!
Off we headed to their new place! A stop for people supplies on the way and soon we were at the new home. A couple tries to get the trailer close to the stand, the grass being wet and all wheel drive still not quite enough to get up the slope…
The height of the trailer was almost perfect to allow me to slide the hives off the trailer and onto the stand.
All that work and they were here! All that was left was to remove the hive closures. Imagine, if you will, someone coming in the middle of the night, spraying you with water to force you indoors, locking you in the house, and shaking the heck out of it. You might understandably be a little unhappy. When I popped the closures out, the ladies came boiling out wanting to take the pent up anger on anything nearby. Maggie and Merlin each got a couple stings.
Did I get stung? You betcha! Once on the leg, once on the wrist, and once on the nose. The leg and the nose were because I didn’t doublecheck and make sure all the zippers were closed on my suit. The wrist was through the ventilated part of my glove.