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...
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