More good - more bad

Checked on the Schampel TBH this evening. Very gentle bees. went through the whole thing. Found the queen. This is the first time I've been in this hive since her mating flight. She's laying like crazy! Eggs and larva everywhere. Very strong colony. Lots of stores pollen and capped honey above the brood. Also 2 bars (out of 10 fully drawn) were full and partially capped honey. I added 5 bars. 2 on the north (between straight bars) and 3 on the south.

Look in the cells at the bottom center of the picture.

Checked my other half of this split again. Found the queen again. Found many cells with multiple eggs in them. Not sure if she's just not laying or what. I decided to feed. Put a feeder on the other side of the follower board. Gonna check to see if I can find another queen. Not sure what to do with the laying worker. I've heard (or read rather) that they are hard to get rid of.

Also checked on the Perone style Langs tonight. The one on the Haddock farm is very active. Also very calm tonight. They are starting to build comb in the 3rd box but they are not using the top bars. They are building swirls up from the bottom. Not quite sure how to handle this.

The Perone land at the Prazen apiary is doing good also. Activity at the entrance has been slower than past weeks but it could be the weather. They've drawn out 6 bars now. Most of the way across the bars and about half way into the bottom box. Huge combs. Lots of nectar in the last 2. Couldn't pull out the rest as they were burred to the sides. With such new comb, I didn't want to risk separating the comb from  the sides to have a better look. Very gentle this evening. Didn't even wear gloves.

Good news and Bad news!

I got a chance at lunch today to peak in the hives at home (2 of them anyway).

The first was the TBH that was from a package at the end of April. Very strong colony. 9 bars drawn out and starting on the 10th. I added 3 more for them to work on (between some of the others to encourage straight comb). Didn't see the queen but did see eggs. Only looked at the first few bars. Took a sting to the arm  but for the most part they were very gentle.

Took a loot at the other TBH. Not so good. This is the colony that was split from the Schampel TBH a few weeks ago. I did see the queen and I did see eggs and larva and capped brood. Even saw bees that looked fresh from their cells. Not a whole lot of activity here. Saw a few dead larva. Didn't notice any foul smell. Not much by way of stores. Wondering if I didn't bring enough stores when I did the split. Might start feeding this one.

I've noticed that the activity at the entrance of my Perone style Lang has gone way down. Could be this crappy weather we've had. This colony has a large number of bees. Only had my veil on (shorts and tshirt) so I didn't want to open this one. They seem to take notice more than my TBH colonies.

Might suit up and peak in tonight if the weather holds out.

Long live the queen!

I inspected the Schampel TBH today. It's been a week since I put the new queen in and I wanted to see if they've released her. More importantly I wanted to see if they've accepted her.

I removed every comb looking for her but did not see her. The cage was empty so I know she was released. I saw no eggs and no larva. There were still quite a few capped brood cells. All other queen cells had been opened up from the side. I took this as a good sign that the queen had been accepted and had removed all rival queens. After going through all 7 combs and not seeing her, I decided to have another go as I put them all back into place. Found her on the 4th bar. Busy crawling around.  I'm assuming she hasn't taken her mating flight yet. She is only 1 week old. I'll check back in another week and I expect to see eggs.

The Split

I inspected Schampel TBH1 today. All is very well. 10 bars of brood and eggs. Good laying pattern. Drones present. Whatever was in before that I thought might be EFB is cleaned up and gone. I personally think it was partially rehydrated crystalized honey. I pulled out all the empty (and crooked) honey comb.

Look at how fat some of those combs are!

Also pulled out the 3 bars of honey on the other end since they were severely cross combed.

I took the 4 bars that were fused (due to the girls drawing their comb out between the bars rather than centered), put them in a nuc box and brought them home (with the queen). This leaves 6 full bars of brood and eggs in the hive. Can't decide if I should let them grow their own queen or order a new one  (A russian perhaps).

All in all they were very docile considering how invasive this visit was.

The nuc box had the comb that was centered between bars. I used strips of aluminum (printer plates) as straps to hold the comb centered under the bars after I cut it off and adjusted it. Saw the queen. Also saw many eggs and capped brood. Left the 4 bars of brood and eggs with an empty comb between them and 3 empty bars on the side. Also left some of the honey that I had removed from the Shampel TBH on the other side of the follower board (with a hole in it) for them to feed on if they need it.

Got the remaining honey comb crushed and straining right now.
Also melted down all of the wax (plus other wax that I'd been sitting on.) I put the wax in a pot of water and bring it to a boil. I then poor it through a paint filter into another large pot and let it cool. The wax floats to the top and hardens.