This afternoon Denton came over and helped me do a split on Hive #4. We took the second brood box off and it became Hive #6 - we think the queen is in this box but we never did find her in either and after we finished we decided she might be in the original brood box - when you don't find the queen - it's a quessing game. But there's definitely a queen.
My plans had been to split the Swarm Hive but decided instead to put an empty brood box on this hive. I like to have two brood boxes on my hives and splitting this hive would have left them with to much to do with the nectar flow ending soon. And we just put the six supers back on the hive.
It's always good to get another beekeepers opinion or hear what they're thinking - I wanted Denton to look at Hive #5 - this hive has evidently been queenless for a while now. So we took a frame from Nuc #3 which was full of eggs (which I did see today) and put in Hive #5 - we were sure not to get the queen (which we did see) and brushed off all the bees before changing around. I should have a queen cell or cells in about 5 days.
And this frame had a couple of queen cells which were gently put back in place.
In Hive #4, we moved two frames up and put two empties in their place and the remainder of the frames in the top brood box were new. Hive #6 - we left all the frames as they were in the brood box and put an empty brood box with 8 new frames and two old in the second brood box. Then
we put back the supers - two on Hive #6 and four on Hive #4.
In Hive #4, we moved two frames up and put two empties in their place and the remainder of the frames in the top brood box were new. Hive #6 - we left all the frames as they were in the brood box and put an empty brood box with 8 new frames and two old in the second brood box. Then
we put back the supers - two on Hive #6 and four on Hive #4.My plans had been to split the Swarm Hive but decided instead to put an empty brood box on this hive. I like to have two brood boxes on my hives and splitting this hive would have left them with to much to do with the nectar flow ending soon. And we just put the six supers back on the hive.
It's always good to get another beekeepers opinion or hear what they're thinking - I wanted Denton to look at Hive #5 - this hive has evidently been queenless for a while now. So we took a frame from Nuc #3 which was full of eggs (which I did see today) and put in Hive #5 - we were sure not to get the queen (which we did see) and brushed off all the bees before changing around. I should have a queen cell or cells in about 5 days.
Nuc #1 looked good.
Nuc #4 is ready to be put in a big box (saw the queen) but decided to do that another day.
Every beekeeper is different and lots of information from Denton today. Denton said a day without getting stung by a bee is like a day without sunshine - I did get stung today! That's two for me this year - more than my normal.
