Moving Day

It is finally time to move my little hive! I created this hive by splitting it from the Yellow hive around the end of March. I verified that there is a laying queen and the bees are nice and healthy, so it's time for them to move to their new home.

Last night around 9:00PM, we installed a migratory cover. This is a nifty little mesh screen that keeps the bees in the hive while allowing for some air circulation. We put it on at night so that all of the field bees would be inside the hive. Here they are this morning:

Around 11:30AM, we popped them into the trunk of the car. Bye bees!

Their new home is only 5 miles away from their old one, so once we placed the bees in their new home, we opened the two flaps on the migratory cover to make sure the bees left slowly. Altering the entrance by placing something in the way (like sticks/grass) makes the bees pay more attention while leaving and theoretically you suffer fewer losses.

Here they are in their new home: