You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do

Today's work was really about correcting issues discovered yesterday.  I started in the outyard.  I compressed the hive in the old stand (I really gotta come up with a better name) down to one story.  I don't love doing it that way because I had to handle the frame with the queen cells and move them from the top story to the bottom story and given my luck with queens this year I'm not confident about that.  Also, all of the frames in the bottom story are now drawn out which would normally signal the need for a second box.  They can't swarm without a queen, but I left two queen cells in it, an heir and a spare you might say.  There is still some capped brood there, so there will be some empty cells in the coming weeks.  I ended up taking off 7 frames of untouched foundation and 2 frames that had started to be drawn out with a little nectar and 1 frame that was drawn out, but empty.  The population of the hive is smaller than I'd like, so I think that the smaller area to defend is a good thing.  I haven't seen much in the way of SHB this season, but I did see about 6 in that hive today.  I think that next week (hopefully) when the new equipment comes in that I'll give them their second story back, but will give them a frame of brood to boost their numbers.

The point of pulling those frames was to give the Auburn nuc in the backyard room to expand.  They were boiling over with bees yesterday and were just days from swarming.  I found three queen cells.  One had an egg and another is on it's way to being sealed.  I separated the queen cells from what I hoped was a frame with a queen on it.  I didn't see the queen, but guessed based on their behavior.  I went back and checked today and finally found the queen.  Marked queens make life easier, but yellow isn't the easiest mark to find.  Anyway, I had guessed right yesterday and the queen was in the old half and the queen cells were in the new half.  As I'm sitting here typing this out, I'm wondering if I should have switched the sides in order to give the queenless half the foragers.  Oh well.  It happens.  Dogs' gonna bark, birds' gonna fly, I'm going to make stupid beekeeping mistakes.  It might be for the best anyway since that will probably be the hive that I rob a frame of brood from for the outyard Hive 2.  Anyway, I gave each half a second story and four frames of foundation.  The queenless half did get the frames that were drawn out with nectar since it will be a few days before the foragers start flying.  I'm saving the empty drawn comb for Nuc 1 when I release the queen on Wednesday.