5/21/2023
“If You Fail to Plan, You Are Planning to Fail”
— Benjamin Franklin
One thing that the Navy instilled in me, especially as I rose in rank, was to plan for everything. Plan for the unusual, the extraordinary, the unlikely and then perhaps you will be ready for the next day.
When I worked for the Missouri Division of Youth Services and was in charge of the yearly graduation for my region, I planned on everything from tornadoes, to parents fighting, and even for a mass casualty event. And most of the time nothing happened except for a tornado or two.
So when I decided to start beekeeping I had a set of plans for obtaining bees:
- Plan A – use a swarm trap to obtain local bees.
- Plan B – buy a package of bees.
- Plan C – buy a nuc of bees and then adapt the Langstroth frames to the Layens frames.
- Plan D – call this a preparation year and try again next spring.
Each plan had it’s advantages and disadvantages. Plan A had no guarantee of success. Plan B the bees would not likely be local, but there would be no need to modify the frames. Plan C requires either a modification to the hive box or to the frames, but there was a good chance of having both brood, pollen, nectar, and perhaps some honey in the frames they came in. And the great thing about plans is that they can run in parallel.
In the middle of May, when it became apparent that there would not be a lot of swarm catching, I started looking into Plan’s B and C. I found out that it would be hard to obtain a package of bees this late in the season, so Plan B was a no go.
Plan C requires modification of existing infrastructure. I found instances of people cutting out the foundation of the Langstroth frames and rubber banding it to the Layens frame. Another idea, found here, required hive modification, which if the hive has a flat top is relatively easy to do. In my case, it would require removal of the top which made it a no go. I then found this idea which involves cutting down the Langstroth frames to fit Layens frames. This is what was decided.
Picture of finished product
Plan D wasn’t really an option.
On Saturday, May 20th, I started looking for nucs for sale in Missouri. In the place I looked I found three that looked promising. I contacted all of them and Dennis Sunderman from Savannah was the first to contacted me. His website is https://www.rvsbee.com/.
We went to church on Sunday and then started his direction. It turned out to be a 6 hour round trip.
Riverside Bees
When we got there, he was dealing with a couple of swarms.
He told me later that he had caught them.
First look at the nuc!
Dennis is an Air Force veteran who served about 10 years after I did. Really great guy. He showed us the bees, answered all our questions, placed the nuc in a mesh bag, and loaded it into the car.
And off we went!
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