Make me an angel

-Posted by Isaac

But that was a long time, and no matter how I try

The years just flow by like a broken down dam

We lost a songwriting legend this week.

I think it was Jayne who got me started on John Prine, a mix CD when we were first dating. We were soon playing his songs in the bars and open mics. This was in Colorado and Montana. He came to Missoula when we were out there, and being penny pinchers, we decided that we just couldn’t afford it. Years later, he headlined the Red Ants Pants festival in Sulphur Springs MT, but we missed him again. Finally, thankfully, we joined our good friends Mike and Angie and caught him here in Columbus. At the sold-out Ohio Theater. What a treat!

John Prine can move you. His songs tell stories, they make you think. Lake Marie. And a few will make you cry. Summer’s End. Hello in there. Or, at least I cry. I’m a softie. I swear, every time. Here’s one that does it to me:

I’ll let you listen and we can cry together,

…thinking about the time passing. And of course, thinking about bees.

This week we made nucs. (Angels?) A lot of them. And I’ll show you the process.

The prepping starts weeks in advance— building boxes and frames, fitting entrance plugs, snapping in foundation, etc…

Now we have a nice shop… makes it look all professional :)

You take the boxes out to the bees, usually needing a four-wheel drive this time of year. This group was at home, so they were easy.

Got to have your queens in early April.

If the splitting is going to take a while, more than a few days, you might as well bank those queens.

And start in.

A nuc is 2-3 frames of brood (ideally capped brood), a frame of honey and a frame of foundation or drawn comb.

You can either spend time finding the queen, or use queen excluders (the silvery screen in the background above). Either way, you need to know which box she’s in, and where she’s not.

This is the first year I’ve seen a lot of queen cups in early April. (Because of the almond pollen flow in February.)

You’ve got to cut the cups. The bees shouldn’t be thinking about making their own queen when you’re giving them an expensive bred queen.

A high queen placement will help keep her warm during these cold nights.

After the nuc is made up, the original hive gets the new replacement frames and some diluted sugar syrup to stimulate comb building.

In this case, I couldn’t just place the nucs in our normal spot next to the goat pen. All the older bees would go back to their original hives. I learned my lesson from last year’s Easter disaster.

Fortunately Becky and Justin at Tilley Farmstead live not far away. They have a nice bee-friendly spot out of the wind. (After I hauled them over and scattered everything, I politely asked permission.)

Permission granted!

Here our little angels will mature for a couple weeks. I’ll eventually make it back around, check the queen’s progress and colony growth, then they’re off to somewhere in the wide world beyond. To parts unknown. In a month each one will be somebody else’s angel.