We spent part of this week-end at the Pizza Yard in Gonzales County re-queening a couple of hives and making up two new hives using the Koehnen queens that I ordered last week. I’m using a small box called a “nuc” (short for nucleus) box. I put in four frames of brood and bees and finish it off with a frame feeder. As the hive grows I will eventually transfer them to a regular sized hive box.
Wrapped up and ready to move to the nursery bee yard. If I left them here most of the bees would return to their original hive. It was hot, of course, so the bees were already out of the entrance trying to stay cool as I loaded them on the truck, below. At the nursery bee yard I installed the queens. I’ll check back in a week to see if the bees accepted their new home and their new queen. If so, the bees have a very good chance to be a viable hive.
This was a trial run for the 30-50 hives that I will make in July. But first, we have to extract more honey! Even in this drought these amazing bees are finding a way to make more honey. We couldn’t be happier.
Gretchen Bee Ranch 
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