After we got home Sunday night, we brought be nuc to the apiary and set it next to the hive the bees would be in. We also brought down the table from the shooting range to give us a flat surface. Then we crashed for the night.
5/22/2023
Where to setup?
The plan I was following recommended bringing a table saw to the apiary and doing the conversion there. While the one I have isn’t very heavy, it’s not light either. Other types of saws listed were a sawzall, circular, and jigsaw. It looked like the easiest thing to do would be to take the table saw out of the garage and work in the driveway.
I had been working on frames the week before and had run out of bottoms before I was finished. Since then, I had made another 20 or so bottoms. I just needed to attach them to the rest of the frames. I started some 1 1/4 sheet rock screws to secure the Langstroth frame pieces to the Layens frame.
The conversion
The first thing I did was take the cover off the nuc and shake and brush the bees into the hive. I noticed several bees climbing all over each over and assumed that the queen was with them.
Then the first frame was removed and the bees were again brushed and shaken into the hive. As soon as they were on the bottom they moved as a unit to what I thought as the queen and her attendees. This pretty much confirmed my hunch.
Both Linda and I walked the frame back to the house for the conversion. I cut both ears off the Langstroth frame and then cut it down to about 12 inches.
Then with Linda’s help, we screwed the 12 inch piece to they Layens frame.
Then walked the Layens frame to the apiary and placed it in the hive.
The process was repeated for the remaining frames. Whenever there was two small pieces they were both put into a Layens frame.
After completing the conversion, I added a frame feeder to help the bees adjust to the new hive and environment.
After lunch, we put our bee garb back on and took some lawn chairs close to the apiary just to see what we could see. We saw lots of bees leave the hive, stop and turn around for a few seconds before they went out foraging. I expected this to happen but was surprised to get to see it happen.
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