Today I did my third, and final, Snelgrove Board split on my own bees. It takes me a hours to do one because my colonies are so huge. (The one today involved three deeps and three mediums!) Found Queen Iris and got her safely stowed away into a nuc box early on so I could be sure of where she was in the ensuing rumpus. Not sure I got the assortment of deep brood frames exactly right, but when you're dealing with nearly 20 of them in three deeps plus some more in a medium, it gets complicated. I'm sure I got at least three frames with usable eggs, or very young larvae, in the queenless box, so it should work out OK, I expect. Gave the QR part a lot of room below the board. One of the flipper openings on the Snelgrove board- the one I wanted to use, of course - wouldn't work, so note to myself next time: move them all before you've got it in place under a deep and a medium!
Gave a frame of capped brood from Iris to my beloved old Queen Buttercup who is living in a nuc while waiting for her new Senior Apartment to get organized. Saw her, but she doesn't have a lot of bees these days. Her supercedure (taking place below the Snelgrove) seems, from the outside at least, to be humming along but it's too early to disturb it to check for brood.
Two days ago I went into Queen Fern's upper box (above the Snelgrove) and harvested two frames with cells that went into the queen castle, so I've got two more splits under way, beyond the one over the Snelgrove board. No signs of swarming in the QR part of Fern, so that's good.
Tomorrow, I need to check my fourth colony and probably add a deep to grow out her brood nest some more. That colony has been getting augmented by lost and confused bees begging thier way in during the extended Snelgrove processes. So it's a good idea to work from largest to smaller when planning sequential manipulations.
And tomorrow night my friend's hive, which I am babysitting over the summer before it moves down to FL in the late Fall, will arrive. I got it moved up on to the trailer two days ago, but the nights have been so warm that the silly bees aren't all going in at night. Saturday night temps will be in the low 40s so that should settle the matter and I can bring them here with little loss of bees. Plan to divide that one later next week so I have a QR colony to receive (or donate) any bees that won't fit in the smaller-sized colony that's going to FL. That's all the Snelgrove boards I own, so I hope that's it for the season! It should be an easier process since last weekend I went through and did an intial arrangement with the upcoming split in mind.
Bees seem to be doing fine but the season and flow are weird, and blooming somewhat out of order. Haven't seen any signs of swarming in my colonies; using both Matt Davey's technique of opening the sides of the brood nest AND Walt Wright's of checkboarding overhead with alternating full and empty (but all drawn) frames. This season is so out of sync, however, I'm not sure what I see will apply in normal years.
Staggeringly tired, and resolved to figure out how to avoid having colonies that are so tall in the future. It takes enormous, and unnecessary, effort to move 10-frame equipment in such giant piles. Can't wait until I can pull the top sections off, and have normal-sized stacks, again!
Enj.