May 25th look-see

 I thought I'd take a look at what's going on in the hive today.  I wanted to take off the top hive feeder and see if any frames in the two supers were full enough to pull out...I need honey.  But they aren't quite ready.  I found several full frames but some were only partially capped.  The top super didn't have much of anything going on so I took some fuller frames from the second super and added them between empty frames in the top one.  We'll see how they do.

What I found is a lot of comb in weird spots...not within the frames.  I pulled it off.  I also took a look at the drone situation, and the green drone frame was full of uncapped honey with lots of drones on it.  So I marched that frame down the driveway, well away from the hive, and shook off the drones, hoping they don't find their way back.  Other than that, I left the  two deeps alone.

I also removed any drone larvae where seen.  Next time I'll need to go through the two lower deeps and see what's going on.  I don't think there's much room down there because I saw capped brood in one of the supers too. So I apparently have a queen.  I may need to take a few frames of honey in the second deep.  I'll wait a few more weeks. At that time, I should be able to pull off some honey from the supers as well.  Fingers crossed.

I'm not sure about splitting my hive.  I seem to have all I can do to keep up with one hive.  I'd sort of like two, for comparisons, or to help one or the other as needed, but definitely that would be my limit if I even decide to do it. I have enough equipment to do another few hives if I want to...just not sure at this time.

Indepth inspection May 7, 2021

 I sure did disturb the bees this morning!  But I needed to give a good inspection and see what was going on in there.  I knew I had a lot of bees but knew not much else about the goings on in there.

My green drone frame was loaded with drone brood ready to hatch.  I guess my timing was good.  That full frame has gone into my freezer and later it will go back on the hive for the bees to clean off.  I put an empty drone frame into the upper deep to replace the full one.

The first super (3rd box from bottom) had quite a lot of uncapped honey but was fairly full so I added a new super. I need honey!  So hoping they'll keep producing and capping it.  I did notice they had some brood in the super too so made sure there was enough empty space below for them to use.

I almost did a split...came very close.  But the weather being so cold at night, I didn't want a new hive to get chilled. I think I just want to do a walk away split and hope for the best.  My problem is never being able to find the queen. I may need help for the split.

Lastly I added the sugar syrup to the top hive feeder and closed it back up. There was one frame that broke apart as I was taking it out of the hive so I left that out by the hive for them to clean off.  

I removed the mouse guard for the afternoon but plan to put it back on tonight as it'll be cold again. 60's in the day, 30's at night.  I'm ready for 80-60 weather.