Attached you will find pics of my crazy nuc from yesterday. Here is a little time line and history to add confusion.
· Weekend before last I put a weak hive with about 300 bees and a queen into a nuc box to help them preserve heat.
· This past Saturday I moved them up to my garden area and moved a strong hive during the day and placed this week on there to give it all the foragers.
· Sat and Sunday was uneventful and normal amount of bee traffic
· Yesterday I got home and said “What the heck” they are getting robbed, well upon further looking they weren’t and bees were hanging out like mid summer
· Well I got my jacket on and lifted the top to find about 2 inches of bees piled on the top and every frame covered not to mention bees below the screen bottom, on the front, etc
· I swapped the frames into a single deep for room and the hive still covered all ten frames, piled outside all night, and were just unbelievable.
The only thing I can think of is a hive swarmed and took over, or a hive I lost (just was empty weekend before last after I had inspected it 2 weeks prior and found a queen etc), I am thinking either a hive swarmed somewhere in my yard and usurpatation (whatever, read Wyatt Magnum’s recent article in ABJ…) or the hive that left was sitting out somewhere waiting for a home and here was this little weak nuc in its original location so it “went home”. Either way a hive that had a queen, goofball size brood pattern and less than a cup full of bees is now about 4-5 lbs of bees!
These creatures never stop amazing me…
Below is basically a order of pics from the time i got home (6:30 pm) till i was done and cam back just before dark...
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