The Second Hive Move (This one goes to my house)

Julia very generously offered me one of the hives. I plan (if I can get it established and get some help to move it) to take this hive to Rabun County to the community garden (see earlier post).

We smoked these bees. We had a brand new totally worthless staple gun (back to Ace with me tomorrow) and tried our best to use an office stapler to attach hardware cloth to the entry way. The first time was a wash - didn't work and the bees were angry. Imagine not being disturbed in four years, when suddenly in two weeks your hive has been disrupted and now moved!

We smoked the hive like crazy to get the bees to go inside and to calm down. I've never in five years used this much smoke on a hive.





In the end we decided to jam the hardware cloth into the entrance rather than try to staple it ineffectively.


Here's the end result. It seemed pretty effective after a lot of effort. Everyone on this expedition except Julia took at least one sting. For Julia's son Noah, this was his first sting ever. He said, "I need boots!" but didn't complain about the pain.

All the hives were loaded into the truck along with the extra equipment.  Then they were driven to their destinations.  One came to my house.  Another to Julia's.  The third hive with only a few bees in it went to another Julia's house.  That Julia has a very weak hive and is great need of bees.

Now the hive sits in my backyard awaiting yet another move in a couple of weeks!..

Moving hives at dusk

A couple of weeks ago, Julia and I went to her friend's house to learn the story of the hives that had been pretty much untouched for four years. We found two good hives and one questionable one. We cleaned things up a bit and left these hives to regroup until we could move them. Moving happened this evening.

Mistake number one: We strapped these boxes together before we blocked the entrance. This brought the bees out in force to see what was disturbing their previously rarely disturbed box.




Julia's husband and friend put on the strap, ratcheted it tight, and we left it for a bit so the bees could calm down a little.

Then Julia's husband and her sister's friend, suited up and all prepared, carried the hive to the back of Ron (the friend's) truck.

The beehive had had a rotten bottom board which we replaced on our earlier visit.  Without the strong wood of the bottom board we would not have been able to staple the #8 hardware cloth to block the entrance.

This was the first hive we loaded onto Ron's truck for delivery to Julia's backyard.