The new honeybees are hived.

Today I installed the two 'nuc' colonies of honeybees into their waiting new hives. My friend Cris helped me., and he was not afraid. We weren't sure what kind of mood the bees would be in when we pried open their shipping boxes, so we had the smoker ready and had veils and gloves on just in case the bees were unhappy about having been cooped up in a little box for 2 days.
As it turns out, the bees were unbelievably sweet natured, and our precautions seemed a bit overdone. Neither Cris nor I were stung despite handling thousands of bees on the ten frames that had been shipped to me in the two nucs.
Here we are, installing the frames of bees and brood into my waiting hive boxes along with some new frames as well, to fill the spaces out. Click on each photo to enlarge and see it better. The nucs came with lots of nice looking brood in capped cells, developing into new young bees which emerge over the coming days. The top picture above shows a nice patch of capped worker bee brood being covered and cared for by nurse bees.
We did get to check the two queens which were in their little queen cages and active. Over the next couple of days the worker bees will continue to chew off the little candy 'door' on the queen cages and release the queens each in their own hive. By that time the bees will be familiar with their new queen's scent and will accept her. In a couple of days I will check to see whether the queens have been released from their cages yet.

Me and Cris (on the right) having lots of bee fun. :)

After getting the frames of bees and the queen cages safely situated in the two hives, I made sure they each had a full frame of honey (saved from my old hive) and also some sugar syrup as a tonic for them after their journey of hundreds of miles rumbling down the highway to get to me from down south in Georgia. My thanks to Don Kuchenmeister, the "Fat Bee Man", for shipping such wonderful healthy bees to me!

I named the hives Esperanza (which means Hope) on the left, and Aurora (which means Morning) on the right. They are named after two of Cris' sisters, all of whom seem to have been blessed with lovely names...