Making Increase

So, we attempted a split, hopefully this will make increase, and not threaten both hives. Took 3 frames of mixed capped/uncapped brood (w/honey on the outside edges) and LOTS of bees (incl. LOTS of drones :( also added into the new hive two frames of capped honey.

There were only a couple more frames of fully drawn out capped honey in the brood chambers of the orig. and none of the single super's frames are filled and capped yet, they're still working on drawing out most of those wireframed bases. (Not sure what happened to the emptied, drawn out supers from last summer... did the wee beasties get into those?) Anyway, left the bottom brood box as is (looked thru every frame and *still* couldn't find the queen, but I triple checked the 5 frames that went to the new hive and didn't see her there.) On the upper brood box, I swapped in 5 new frames, at locations 1, 4, 5, 6, & 7 (one or two plastic un-drawn (1&4, i believe), one nicely drawn out, fairly new comb(5 i think), and two were ugly dark older drawnout comb that needed cleaning -- all these new dadant frames were part of the package of 6 boxes, 3 lids & base I picked up from a Langley beekeeper last week.)

The new hive (thanks Buzz for the quick construction of a bottom board!) was installed in the backyard of Heather & Ian over by the school. There was a lot of angry buzzing, but they settled down fairly quickly and most all marched in. Fed them a 1:1 sugar syrup in the inside feeder (w/a couple of twigs tossed in for them to climb on to drink so hopefully no drownings.)

In the initial hunt for the queen, I didn't want to smoke them, and I got tagged twice on the hand. I should have taken out the first stinger much quicker, but waited 'till I got out and found scissors and scrapped it. Now a day later, am still severely swollen in the hand and have next to no muscle strength in my right hand. I see from the interwebs that quick is more important than neat in getting out the stinger, so we shall know for next time... don't drop the hive tool, use it to scrape out the stinger RIGHT AWAY. extreme pain! Hope Buzz' swelling has gone down, I think we sufficiently pissed them off, that he got tagged a couple of times too!

Now we shall wait and see what happens... hopefully the new yellow 'sunshine' hive will start to grow it's own queen this week... and the weather'll be great right into the late fall!

best,
-=pj=-