Last night as the sun set, a tractor trailer from California arrived with several hundred hives that Eric Luebbert (TheBeeKeeper) and 4 for his beekeeper buddies purchased from a reliable queen breeder/larger scale beekeeper that we know.
This was done to support our agricultural exemption programs and we needed a lot more bees quicker than we could make splits. So . . . good, calm (for bees) full hives were brought in. We’ll still make splits from some, but this will allow us to meet the urgent need; agriculture exemptions must be filed by the end of April. April is crazy busy bee season.
So . . . the tractor trailer arrives. The nets come off. Our good friend and newby beekeeper Shane unloads them carefully with his bobcat. They are loaded on trailers. And off the bees go to new bee yards.
The whole process, with duct taping the hems of our suits (bees crawl at night, you can’t have ANY possible entrances), removing the nets, smoking the hives, unloading, staging, and getting the trailers strapped down went from sunset until 3:00am when we arrived at our local bee yard.
Come see us at The Keller Farmers Market April 23rd!
https://www.facebook.com/KellerFarmersMarket
