Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Double screen out, or where's the door?

It has been nearly 4 weeks since putting a box with a laying queen on the box with the laying worker, separating them with a double screen board.  9 days ago I saw an egg in the bottom box so I left the double screen in place.  Now I figure it is time to finish the combining process.
After taking off the super, the top box and the screen, I took a look at one of the central frames from the bottom box.  I still saw ratty capped drone cells and what looked like emerging drones.  Then I noticed that they were dead drones.
I removed one but it looked normal, just dead.  If mites were responsible they were long gone.
I put the box with the queen on the bottom, then reassembled the hive with just one super.
Now the foragers that had been using the back door will need to find their way around to the front.  Too bad I can not just put up a sign pointing the way.
The back of #2 after removing the double screen board and the back door

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