notes from may 15, 2010...
well, another interesting day at bee happy apiaries. feel like i'm over the fear factor and back in the saddle again. i plan on starting a "split" - a colony formed by borrowing bees and brood from a strong colony ("splitting" the strong colony), putting the frames in an unoccupied brood box and letting them raise their own queen thus starting a new colony of their own.
got in the girls and this is what i found:
polyxena christina: not much activity in the two supers, top one was empty - that's the one i added in january. brood box only had about 5 frames with bees on them. saw lots of nectar and pollen, and capped brood in spots.
saw the queen. put everything back together and left them alone. didn't feel she was strong enough to borrow anything for the split. she had her last free lunch (feeder) but hasn't touched it so i removed it. wondering if she swarmed or if she's just not very strong...did not add a super.
agnes: a bit grumpy. had to step back a few times and let them settle. very strong. lots of bees.
full frames of capped brood. lots of pollen and nectar. from her brood box i took one frame of nectar and pollen, and one frame with larvae and capped brood and put it in the split. replaced those with new foundation. activity in both supers, and both supers were pretty heavy but definitely not full or capped. added one super.
esther: what a girl. she is so pretty and laying like crazy. lots of bees. took one frame of pollen and nectar, one frame almost full of larvae, and one frame mixed (capped, larvae, pollen, nectar) to add to the split. replaced those with new foundation for them to pull out. they had three drone cells in the bottom super and had built bridge comb on top of the QE. saw 8 bees hatching at the same time on one frame. asked andy to video it with my little flip video camera. we watched and watched and watched. then i got inside later and found that he had forgotten to push "record". (no comment)
the bottom super was partially capped. top super was capped as well, but that's the one i left on over the winter so i'm pretty sure it's not new honey. added one super.
didn't find any queen cells in any of the hives.
split: filled the rest of the brood box with new foundation. i had 5 shallow frames of capped honey still in storage so i put those in a super directly above where the brood frames are in the split. filled in the rest with new foundation. don't have a QE on yet, but since there's no queen i guess it's not much of an issue for a couple of weeks. i wasn't sure how everybody would get along so i dusted each brood frame with powdered sugar before i added it to the split.
then we moved the split into esther's old position, and put esther right next door. put polyxena christina's feeder on just to see if they are interested in it. i don't think they will need it but i was going to pour it out anyway. and who know if i got any eggs?? since i've only been able to spot the eggs once or twice in my entire beekeeping experience, i'm about 95% sure that the egg phase is a myth along the lines of the loch ness or big foot - just enough evidence to make you wonder but not really believe... :)
so, now i'm wondering about what's going on in the split. did they all find their way home? did they make new friends and decide to stay and party? how long til they decide to make a new queen? how old can the larvae be that they turn into her royal highness? who decides which larvae gets the promotion?
stay tuned...
