Sunday, April 6, 2014

Both split and #2 seem to be doing well

Front door of the split box




It has been a week since we made the split.  There has been a lot of activity at the door since yesterday with foragers leaving and returning and a small orientation flight this afternoon.  Now I have to decided what to do with the nuc.  Some possibilities: transform the nuc frames to fit into Olea's top bar hive; use the queen to replace #2 queen; reactivate hive #4.  The original plan had been to use the queen to replace the #2 queen because she did not seem to be laying much.  (More about that below.)
I do want to repopulate Olea's hive.  Modifying Langstroth frames can be done but involves more work and mess than I would want to take on.  Making a "shook swarm" looks complicated, but there may be someway I can accomplish it, perhaps with someone's (Kathy Niven) help.  And we can also hope to capture a swarm.  I have no plans to buy bees for Olea's hive.
I looked into #2 to see if the queen had started laying in the frame I inserted last week.  Unfortunately I failed to mark the frame.  The one  I suspect was the transplant had nectar and pollen, no larvae or eggs seen.  But we learned last week that the bees will flood the eggs with nectar, so it's possible that the nectar-filled cells had eggs in them.  In any case, there were a lot of bees in the box, covering 7-8 frames.  There were at least 3 frames with brood (I did not inspect all the frames).  I put the top brood box back on.  It had only one frame with drawn comb on both sides, several with comb on one side, the drone frame and empty foundationless frames.
I did not have more frames with drawn comb available because yesterday Bruce and Gregg traded me five empty frames for drawn comb.  They are getting a package of bees this week.

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