Wednesday, April 25, 2012

bee increase part 2

Low this morning was 71.  Took the observation hive outside and managed to accomplish my plan!  Took all the bees out, cleaned it up (thanks hubs) and only put back the freshly drawn frame with eggs and larva.  I wasn't sure I had the queen in the new hive, so I just put ALL the bees in there and put the one frame back, plus 3 empty frames. (Hope that there's enough nurse bees that made it back in to raise their new queen.)  So many bees make it hard to spot her, so I hoped I had her.

We put the OH back into the house and before I removed the barrier to the outside entrance I looked around to make sure the queen wasn't just hanging out somewhere out there.  There was a small clump of bees near the ground and sure enough, the queen was right there in the middle.  Got her scooped up and put into the new hive!  Yay!  Put the queen and the 3 packed frames into their new home and now I'm just waiting for the mass migration of the foragers to return to the OH.  Only ended up with 3 bees in the house. ;)  So far so good.

Current status then:  Two outside hives with queens, one outside working on queens and the OH working on a queen.

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