Installing Bees in Two Hives

I picked up my bees last night. It was warm today, so perfect. I transferred two 5-frame nuclear hives into the 10-frame box. Not a sting thanks to the jacket and veil. The Nucs are ripping healthy! They are going to fill that box fast — when they fill in two more frames, I will add the second brood box on top of each.

Each hive has its own queen. There are about 7,500 bees in each box now. They will expand to about 30,000 bees in each box when the second deep super is on and full.

All the bees, other than the queen, live and die in about 40 days in the summer, so each queen has to lay about 30,000 eggs a month or 1,000 a day without any days off.

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