I worked my first load down yesterday. According to all my scale tickets the bees lost on average 15lb worth of feed, but they were brooded up very good and full of bees.
Now I did ship them in with 20lb of hard sugar and pollen mix of our own concoction, of which most was consumed, and the occasional hive did have a box of honey on. Overall they did not make any honey, but they sure are in great shape for the next pollination job.
Here's a pic of some bees on the back of a hot truck ready to be unloaded. Most of my bees on blueberries consisted of a deep brood box, a shallow honey box, and a 2" riser where I put our homemade supplemental feed in case of inclement weather. Of which was well needed this year.
And this is me, in the middle of unloading the bees.
These were down near Union, ME. The last 2 trucks from Union were loaded last night, and starting to gather in Blue Hill/Ellsworth area tonight. Trucks lined up for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday shipping next week.
We are still having a slight difficulty getting trucks to load.
I got my two loads at $2.90 , The broker was telling me some drivers are getting $4.00 a mile to haul pipe on the east coast. Its been really hard to find trucks out of Maine this year.
I just left Maine with a load. The bees lost weight, but they look like the photos you have above. The growers on the next job could not believe the quality of the bees. There were four pounds of pollen sub at the start with sugar and every colony so far consumed it all. I go back on Thursday for another load. Bob Harvey helped me load, and he was telling me he had trouble getting a truck in to Maine to send colonies out.
Worked down my 4th load out of maine today, some that came out of the Blue Hill area of Maine, Took of 10 or so skids of honey of this load, mediocre weights but too heavy to send to the next job, Overall I've taken off about 24 skids, probably 30 drums of honey total so far.
My last few loads were on the barrens, I don't expect any honey at all from those bees. But they did get a nice slab of sugar/pollen brick concoction, so they hopefully have a high population as well.
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