Hive #3 has continued not to thrive. On inspection a couple of days ago, it looked the population had actually decreased. The bees were only on the lateral 4 combs in both brood boxes and there was not much honey in the super. There was capped brood and I did spot the queen. There were a couple of frames with dead drone brood and no nurse bees. I decided that I would combine this hive with #2.
But, as expected, there are a problem that must be solved. #2 consists of 2 deep boxes and 2 mediums. #3 has one deep and 2 mediums. Simply stacking the boxes would create a ridiculously high and unworkable tower. So the number of boxes has to be reduced. A project I started today.
The super in #3 had 3 frames with honey. I switched these 3 frames into #2's super; one box down. I then looked for the queen in #2, but could not find her. I put the queen excluder between the deep and medium. There is capped brood in the super which will emerge in the next 10 or so days. At that point, I can shake the bees out of the super and combine the remaining deep with #2. If it turns out that the queen is in the medium box, the process will be the same. I would, in the latter case, probably put the medium frames into a deep box so there will be room for all the bees.
It kind of sounds like I know what I'm doing. Don't be fooled!
