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01/20/2006 Archived Entry: "Bees and beetles"

Well after paying mad money to have a cardboard box overnighted so I could transfer the bees I bought into a cardboard nuc box temporarily. I received the cardboard nuc box. This nuc box is a small bee holder and only holds five frames. A normal hive box will hold ten. I have a wooden nuc box coming ups ground. So it will be next week when I receive it. I needed to return the orginal bee box back tot he guy I bought it from. So when the cardboard nuc arrived I was very happy I had a place to transfer the bees to so i could give the orginal box back to it's owner.

I have been working way to much the past couple of days also. I have had about 2 hours of sleep each day for the past 4 days. And after dicovering the queen cell I was reall happy. Today I had a chance to just go and see my bees. I figured I would not really go into the hive and then I saw a damn hive beetle crawl out. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!! I cannot win. I take a peek inside and sure enought here are about 5 hive beetles crawling around. There also some larvae that are long. I suspect they are hive beetle larvae, they are very different from the fly maggots. The are longer and gray in color.

I didn't see the queen cell when I was cleaning out but I didn't look real hard and I didn't want to disturb to much. The hive I bought seems to be doing pretty well. They haven't started building on the new frame. I didn't expect them to, however there were no beetles in their hive.

Things I have learned:
I should have place the hive when I relocated it into a nuc box. The nuc box should have had four brood frames and one honey frame.
Constantly looking into my hive is probably not helping.
I need to stop working so much overtime, it is not worth it.