A new hive has been started

Instead of purchasing the package of bees, like I had planned, I bought another Nuc.  The bee package had some issues:
1) I never heard from the vendor after trying to arrange shipment to ship after Memorial Day
2) Vendor charged my account without being able to contact them so I was suspicious
3) Vendor's voice mailbox was full so I couldn't leave a message
4) I tried emailing them twice with no response

So I disputed the charge on my credit card and ordered a Nuc from Imaginethathoney@hotmail.com.  These folks in Swanzey, NH are the people I took a course from last year.  This year, they had some Nucs to sell so I bought one for $130...the same as it would have cost me for the bee package.  Shipping was costing, from that crappy vendor, about $40-45.  I would have paid the same amount of money for fewer bees.  I was glad I contacted Jody in Swanzey because I hadn't realized until then that they were offering Nucs.

I added the bees to their new hive on Sunday and they seem to be thriving.  This one has a marked queen which will make it so much easier.  I gave up, last year, on trying to find the queen.  I figured that if I had plenty of workers and eggs were being laid, that I probably had a queen.

I'm watching last year's hive closely.  I'm not sure everything is great in that hive. I'm going to add a patty I had made last year that is made with sugar and crisco.  It helps with mites, making the mites slide off the bees. I will add that to the older hive this weekend.

Let's see how this year goes.

One thing I want to do before winter is to figure out if there's another, better way to insulate the bees.  I'd like them to be thriving in the spring.  I was lucky to not lose all of them this year, I think.

I asked about one member of last year's class to see how his bees fared over the winter and I learned that he lost them all!  He had such a great hive that he was splitting it in the fall, like I did.  But I don't know what he did in terms of insulating the hive.  Hopefully I'll see him around sometime to see what happened (and learn).  I do know he lives in a higher elevation but I would think that with proper insulation, they could survive there.  But again, I'm not sure what his strategy was, if he even had one! I think I'm learning that some of this is just luck.