Extraction and checking on the queen

 Last week, when I added the new queen, I pulled 4 frames from the super that were heavy but not entirely capped.  I put them into the freezer until I was ready to extract.  I decided to extract yesterday.  It's always a process and messy so I wanted to just get it done and get some honey!  Those now empty frames will go back into the same super to let the bees clean them and hopefully refill again.

I went into the lower deep to see if the queen was laying eggs and she was.  I also saw some uncapped larvae so now I will let her do her work and hope to see a new batch of bees anytime now.

Because of an upcoming operation, I'll need to get them all set because there will be no heavy lifting for a while. The second deep has honey and they have plenty of time to fill it for their winter stores.  I just need to keep an eye on drones eating the honey so I try to remove them as soon as I see brood and also have the green frames in there for drone brood...except one of them is being filled with nectar. Ugh.

I do want to give an oxalic acid treatment for varroa which I plan to do next week. So far, there don't seem to be many but want to get ahead of it.

That's about it in my beeland.

Released new queen from cage - 6/11

 I released the queen today and she immediately went out of sight down into the hive.  While I was in there again (3x this week!), I pulled a few super frames that had mostly capped honey and added to the freezer.  Then I consolidated the two supers into one because they are heavy to lift from that height.  I will keep watch and pull other frames from the one super as they fill out and replace with frames that have been built out with honeycomb.

Now I'll leave them alone for a few weeks!

New queen goes into hive June 8th.

 Let's see how this goes...

June 7. No brood and no queen

 I did a hive check because I wanted to check the supers to see how they were filling up.  Then I decided to get to the lower deep to see eggs because I didn't see any in the upper chambers.  Nothing I could see.  

So I went to get a queen.  35 minutes later the queen looked half dead and sure enough was totally dead this morning.  I should have closely inspected it to make sure it was lively.  I doubt it was.  Money down the drain.

So next morning, today, I got another queen from a local person and this queen is feisty!  Also the beekeeper insisted I check it before leaving.

So, queen is in the hive in a cage and I will release her on Friday.  Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile the honey supers are getting full as are the frames in the upper deep which is honey for the bees.  Honey is the supers will be mine.  I will take out full frames and freeze them until cooler weather.