Checking in

Yesterday I opened up the stronger hive. It is not full, but still seems to be doing well. I saw one drone without wings, but other than that no signs of disease. I saw eggs, milk brood and capped brood. There is still room for honey stores and pollen. I pulled a frame of capped brood and a frame of honey to put into the other hive. I did not see the queen. I did not go into the bottom box, just the top two.
I opened up the split and found they had finished the syrup. There is still lots of room in the hive, but they are working on putting in stores. I did not see the queen. The weather was turning so I only spent enough time to put in the frame of brood and the frame of honey in the bottom box. I put a frame that was only nectar and partially drawn comb above the inner cover so they can clean it out, and I added another jar of syrup. I'm trying to leave them alone. I expect to start Hopguard treatments and Fumagilin syrup in a couple of weeks. I will probably be rearranging frames then, and I hope to see the queens.

She is doing well

I opened up the split to see if the queen I purchased was ok. On Friday I confirmed that she was not in the queen cage any more, but I did not see her so today I was checking more carefully. I did see the queen with her pretty blue dot on her back. She was on the frame of capped brood and had chewed through the 2 emergency queen cells. She had also laid some eggs in some open cells on the frame so there is hope for that colony now.
I will be checking the other hive tomorrow, I hope. I am planning to move another frame of capped brood from the strong hive to the weak one to boost the population some more. I need to make sure that the strong hive has room for food and brood. It is nice and heavy and appears to have a large population.

Queen check in

I opened up the split to see if the queen had been released. She had. There were a bunch of workers in and around the queen cage. I'm not sure why, but I removed it from the hive. I'll give her a week and then go looking for eggs. They still had syrup and frames with honey, pollen and nectar. I limited the entrances to discourage robbing. Everything else looks fine in the colony. I did not check the original hive. I will look at both hives next week.

Got Honey! And working on a split.

On July 22, I pulled 4 frames of honey off of my hive and attempted a split. I rented an extractor from the Honey Exchange and extracted the honey into a bucket with a honey gate--minimal investment in new equipment. I picked up the extractor on Tuesday July 21, pulled frames the next day, extracted and washed  the next day, and returned the extractor the following day. Little did I know that the rental charge was per day. My mistake. I bottled the honey in 12 oz and 4 oz Mason jars and estimated that I got about 16 lbs of honey. Finally something out of instead of always into the hives!

The split however did not succeed. They did not make any queen cells so the population of brood hatched out and the overall population of the split started to dwindle. I purchased a queen from Karen at New Moon Apiary on Monday August 10. I figured it does not hurt to have more genetic diversity in the yard, and this saved time for the colony to build up for winter. I pulled a frame of mostly capped brood from my existing hive so there will be nurse bees to assist the new queen in the split, and I placed her queen cage and the frame of brood into the bottom box of the split. There was food in the colony, but I also added a syrup feeder on top because it was supposed to rain on Tuesday. It poured on Tuesday so I took a look at the queen cage on Wednesday. The frame of brood had an emergency queen cell under construction, and the queen was still in her cage. They had only half cleared the sugar plug. I decided to leave things as they are and check again on Friday August 14. Trust the bees...