Bringing Home the Nucs!

The safest way to transport bees would NOT be in the rear of a hatchback. 

While this is obvious to anyone moving bees some of us don't have trucks. 

Let me be real clear, it takes around 1,400 bee stings to kill a person, each of those nuc boxes contain over 5,000 bees.
We have them covered in screens however all hell would break loose if we rolled the car. 
It'd be ugly. 

The safest way would be to drive with jacket on..or just use a truck.

Once we arrived home we let them sit for a half hour to relax.  They weren't too pleased with the drive but we kept the ac on and protected them from the sun.

I have a ventilated jacket as well as a full suit.  The full suit is pretty cool for dealing with unknown bees.  When I installed my first nucs I was fully protected with gloves and all. 
This is an unnecessary level of protection as I soon found out.

I really like my hive frame holder which keeps removed frames clean and safe while I'm working.

I installed the hives onto concrete blocks, inserted the five frames into the middle of my 8 frame deep hive bodies and moved onto the next nuc.

It is really fascinating watching the bees.  I spent some time looking at the frames and was able to identify drone and worker brood cells.  I have a ton to learn as I didn't find the queen...I'll keep looking!