In March, Tirta purchased five bee boxes and had them delivered to his mother's house (just on the other side of the school, not far from his father's property, where I am living). I was not able to convince him to wait two weeks for the delivery so that I could conduct a pre-survey or get 6 or 9 boxes so that I could do better with replication, but I did manage to convince him to locate three of the five in two different areas. The boxes were delivered on the 17th and two days later he announced we were going to Klungkung to learn how to split hives. We returned late on the 19th with four more boxes of bees that I was told had to be kept at the mother's house. However, by May it was clear that the bees, especially those in the four newly split hives, were not thriving. I consulted a local beekeeper about moving hives on May 18th. The first thing he did was to consult the calendar (the Hindu calendar is so very, very complicated) and told me that it would be safe to move them on May 20th. Or failing that, June 4th or June 19th. Any other day, I would have a low chance of survival of the hives. Given that I was going to be at UTS on June 4th and June 19th was such a long way off, we moved them on the 20th.
I randomly selected two of the four split boxes to move (leaving two at Ibu's house to compare against). Then we waited until it was really dark (nearly 8pm), and went to Tirta's mother's house and taped up the entry to two of the boxes.
We weighed all the boxes and then took the two selected ones off their hooks and carried them out to the road where we'd parked the scooter. Bagus and Gong Gek came along to help so it was quite a social event. I hopped up behind Tim on the scooter and Bagus carefully handed me the two boxes. Luckily I've gotten a lot more confident on the back of the bike, but, still, riding pillion in the dark of the night carrying two boxes of bees through kilmoters of pot-holed roads is enough to get anyone's heart rate up. I was terrified that Tim would corner fast and the boxes and I would shoot out into the road. Or that I'd get tangled in the tape and let all the bees out. Or that... But it all turned out OK
We weighed all the boxes and then took the two selected ones off their hooks and carried them out to the road where we'd parked the scooter. Bagus and Gong Gek came along to help so it was quite a social event. I hopped up behind Tim on the scooter and Bagus carefully handed me the two boxes. Luckily I've gotten a lot more confident on the back of the bike, but, still, riding pillion in the dark of the night carrying two boxes of bees through kilmoters of pot-holed roads is enough to get anyone's heart rate up. I was terrified that Tim would corner fast and the boxes and I would shoot out into the road. Or that I'd get tangled in the tape and let all the bees out. Or that... But it all turned out OK
We had decided to move them to Susut because 1) I'd had a chance to pre-survey bees in the area and 2) there wasn't anyone keeping bees nearby and 3) Tirta wants to start large-scale beekeeping on that property sometime soon. So it seemed like a pretty good spot.
I'd thought I'd put them up towards the top of the rice paddies, just a few hundred feet from the nearest road, but Tirta asked me to put them at a cow shed closer to the river. Walking through the paddies in the dark, carrying the two boxes was also a little nerve wracking (but I only stepped in one hole and I didn't lose the boxes when I tripped :-)
We got them placed by 8:30pm and left them with the tape on so that they would have time to acclimate (and hopefully would not all run away as soon as the sun came out).
I'd thought I'd put them up towards the top of the rice paddies, just a few hundred feet from the nearest road, but Tirta asked me to put them at a cow shed closer to the river. Walking through the paddies in the dark, carrying the two boxes was also a little nerve wracking (but I only stepped in one hole and I didn't lose the boxes when I tripped :-)
We got them placed by 8:30pm and left them with the tape on so that they would have time to acclimate (and hopefully would not all run away as soon as the sun came out).
We left them until mid-morning, then came back and released them. They were happy little bees and streamed out of the boxes so quickly that I worried that we'd never see them again. But, we came back to check on them at the end of the day and they were still coming and going happily.
I haven't entered (much yet analyzed!) the data yet, but it looks like the two hives that I've moved have dramatically increased in activity in the month since they were moved (maybe once I catch up on computer work, I'll add a graph here). I'm mostly just glad that I didn't kill them while trying to move them :-)