So, I just could not put off my hive inspection any longer! Occasionally looking into the hive at the entrance, I was seeing dead brood on the bottom board. GREAT! Now what! I thought it was chalkbrood, but they were not infected. So I was worried about it and actually lost sleep from it last night. I woke up from having a bad dream about it, believe it or not! lol!
So, I got up when the sun was still out. It was about 1030am and got some frames built. I wanted to make sure I was prepared to deal with everything I could while I was in there. I was hoping at this point to remove the deeps that keep cursing me from switching to all mediums. I got a bunch of frames made up to replace where the deeps would hopefully disappear from. I have quilt boxes on top the hives with my own top covers.
I did not use any smoke this time and they reacted very well to me handling them. Must have been to busy with other stuff! I took the top cover off, and I could not believe the AMOUNT of WATER that come running off of it from the underside! The quilt box was soaked! Even started having mold growing on it! Well, I just figured out why the brood was dying!
I took both quilt boxes off and used just the top covers instead. I'll be letting the bees do my waterproofing work on the underside of the cover. I managed to get rid of some of the deep frames and my homemade excluders seemed to be doing a pretty good job.
Now, here is the kicker! I found eggs in both of my 2 hives I have. Even found the queen walking around on one. The one I saw the queen on had 2 queen cells! I pulled one of the cells off and put it in a bowl of paper towels and next to a heat source. Its already capped and when I pulled the cell off the comb, I accidentally exposed her a little bit. By my calculations, since my last inspection, she is no older than 14 days. So she is darn near ready to come out! I saw her squirming around a little and she does have a little color to her.
I left the other cell in the hive. My 2nd hive was even more crazy! I have like 8 swarm cells and I think I had some queen cells!
I'm utterly shocked at all this and its a huge surprise to see! I thought they had enough room for more expansion, but they have something else in mind! Maybe my nectar flow is starting!
Now, hive 1 is 2 mediums worth of bees and stores, etc. Hive 2 has 3 mediums of bees, stores, etc.
I want to make splits with all these queen cells, swarm cells, I have 8 nuc boxes ready for bees. I have yet to see my main nectar flow, can I manage this? I was hoping to make splits from all the cells! What do you guys think? Should I be more conservative on splitting them and maybe see if anyone wants to buy a queen?
