A few days ago there was a break in the rain and it was warm enough to go into the hive. There were a number of things I needed to do.
1. See if the combining with the survivors of #3 had been successful.
2. If there was no brood in the medium box, place a queen excluder between the bottom deep box and the medium.
3. If brood is present in the medium box, find the queen in the bottom box and place the excluder as above. Then when all the brood in the medium has emerged I will be able to move the box as I wish.
4. Take frames with honey and pollen from the top deep box and place them into the bottom deep box. Remember, the top deep has only 5 frames; it was hive #3.
My goal is to get #1 back to 3its previous formation of two deeps for brood and mediums for me to harvest. I also plan to use queen excluders on one or two hives this year to see how they do. There is quite a bit of controversy.
Here is what I saw.
1. The combine had been successful with almost all the newspaper chewed away.
2. There was still brood in the medium box.
3. There was a lot of brood including drone cells in the deep box. I could not find the queen. I did not spot the queen in the medium box, either.
I took three frames with resources from the erstwhile #3 box and switched them into the bottom box. I put the queen excluder between the medium and top box,
I hope the queen will eventually move into the bottom box and I will be able to restructure the hive. If not, so be it.
