I checked on the home yard yesterday. One split had eggs already, the other split still has queencells. Hmm… that seemed odd. But either way, they will be fine in within 10 days.
The blue hive had a surprise, a dozen swarm cells. She’s a gentle hive, I like her, so I made emergency splits — 4 of them. Due to the reverse I did earlier, the hive had a deep, which only had honey, a medium with some comb built out, and a Western/Illinois body. Which I’m trying to get rid of. And this made it worse! All the swarm cells were at the bottom of the western frames, attached to the wooden bottom bar. So I couldn’t simply cut them out. I found the queen, she seemed small, Put her on the left most split in a deep. That will solve the swarm issue, and then I pulled 6 frames with cells to make 2 more splits. And I found 2 cells that I could cut out. So I pulled 2 frames of bees from the far left hive. I gave all splits a honey frame from the donor hive.
Now I need to wait a month, and when all those splits are stable, steal back the western frames, and put them back in the western body. Take out the medium frames in the western, and put them in a medium and give them to the splits. Ack! Damn Western. Will rejoice when it is gone. The other 3 I retired or cut to mediums. Cutting the frames, which is the more valuable part, was laborious. Should have made them into swarm traps.
On swarm traps, I’m making one more to take me to 12. The season rapidly approaches. And I need to start selling off some of these hives to reduce home yard congestion. The 55% hive loss has affected Texas, I hear and I want these genetics out there.
Count of hives 9 hives, 5 splits
