Bringing the Girls Home

Last night at 6:30pm, I got the call from P.N. Williams that my nucs were in and ready to be picked up. I got in the car and drove down to Forest Park, about 30mins away. When my turn came, he asked if I had done this before, which I have, so he said "go put this one in your trunk." This is what he was talking about:

I loaded up 3 more just like it, only one of which had a screen, and headed back to Decatur. I fully expected to open my trunk to the mother-of-all-swarms, but instead I was greeted by this:

Instead of going into the hive on the ride home, they decided to come on out and play in the trunk. I let them rest for an hour, moved the boxes to the ground next to their new homes and went to bed.

This morning, I found a small group of girls that had decided to "spend the night" in the trunk. This is an overhead shot of the back of the Passat.

The bee suit went back on. I grabbed a bee brush and an LL Bean catalog and moved them to the back yard. Several sisters rode in to work with me, nonetheless. Later today, I plan to install the nucs into my new Brushy Mtn hives.