An exciting day today when more livestock arrived on our little farm. 20,000 native Irish Black Bees! I have the hive already set up with the frames in place. The bees arrived in a nuc (nucleus/mini hive) on 5 frames which were transferred to my hive with another 6 blank frames. The bees will use these frames to lay eggs and store honey for their use during the winter. The Queen is just about visible in the bottom left corner of the photo, she has a blue spot on her (to help identify her easily). It’s very difficult to take photos on your phone wearing extra thick beekeeping gloves. From now on I will perform a weekly inspection just to check that all is well with the hive, that the Queen is still there and the bees are working hard.