The queens arrive glued to the bottom of a cardboard box. My office staff has gotten used to unusual deliveries, but the mailman is not amused. I got an extra queen just in case.
The queen is marked blue for the year 2010. All the queens look frisky and well-developed.
The queen cages are ready for installation via the bottom entrance of the nucs, which were maintained queenless overnight to make them receptive to the new queens. I christened this technique “front-door queen introduction”. It works quite well - kudos to my mentor for teaching me this trick.
I blocked the entrances overnight after introducing the queens in the late afternoon. The nuc on the right is blocked with screen because it has a solid bottom board.
My new “nuc table”, made from scrap lumber. I put the legs in coffee cans because ants are a problem in my bee yard whenever hives are fed. Plain water in the cans allowed the ants to swim across the surface, and used frying oil attracted too many bees (whose bodies acted like bridges for the ants). The best barrier turned out to be water topped off with a little motor oil.