Hi all!
I picked up my nuc last Saturday and the seller did not get my order correct. He had agreed to provide me with a medium frame nuc but when I arrived it was a deep. Needless to say I wasn't happy but what's done is done.
I took the girls home and stacked up 2 mediums and placed the three empty frames to the outsides of both boxes and dropped the deeps in the middle. The nuc was in pretty good shape with lots of capped brood and the outside nuc frames were close to half drawn out.
I did not want to do it this way and I began to immediately question how I was going to make the transfer back to mediums. I am a brand new beekeeper and have have zero experience. I have read and watched hundreds of articles and videos on bees and I have a good idea on how things are supposed to look but real life is a lot different than a video and a very experienced beek keeper. LOL
So the day after installation I decided I was going to switch from a medium brood box to a deep. I ordered up a new box and when it arrived on Tuesday I assembled it, painted it and built 3 of the 8 frames it came with. (Running 8 frame set-up)
I melted some beeswax and heavily waxed the new plastic foundations. (side note-I applied a good layer of wax to all of the frames I built this spring)
On Wednesday I installed the new deep box and transferred the deep frames from the nuc over to it.
My dilemma was in just those 5 days the girls had made incredible progress on drawing out new comb on the medium frames.
I didn't want to remove all their work so I put one of the two medium boxes on top of the deep and transferred the frames that had comb into the medium upper box.
Some of the frames in the upper "brood" box were given to me by a friend and had drawn comb already.
I saw cells full of new pollen and some with nectar or sugar water. I can't really tell yet.
They have been going thru almost a quart of sugar syrup a day.
Now the question is do I just leave em alone for a few weeks and check later? Are they just storing that sugar syrup in the comb and not eating it?
I'm not in the game for honey, I just really like bees and the honey is a pretty awesome bonus.
I don't plan on taking any of their honey this year as I'm sure they won't have much and will need it all for winter.
Also I don't want to keep disturbing them and have them leave.
Right now the clover is in bloom and the bees are all over my yard. Other than that I don't know what else they have for resources here in farm country in south central Michigan. I am fortunate that I live next to 150 acres of woods, a creek and an alfalfa field which tends to only be about 50% alfalfa and the rest weeds and grass.
Taking delivery so late in the year has me concerned as well.
Any thought? Suggestions?
Thanks in advance
Bushman