Time to take off the cover and see how weak or strong this hive is. This was again a very warm day. Upon opening, the bees welled up over the top bars of the frames, a good sign! We pulled the frames to inspect and found many frames of sealed brood, pollen and honey. We notched one of the frames of brood where we could find a 36 hour or younger larvae. We would have notched 2 frames, but were unable to find the right aged larvae. We are using the OTS Queen Rearing method by Mel Disselkoen. This procedure can be found on page 32 of his book, OTS Queen Rearing, A Survival Guide For Beekeepers Worldwide. We put the deep box on the bottom board and also located the queen. We wanted to be sure she was in the deep. We then placed a queen excluder between the deep and the medium we placed over it. The notched brood frame was placed 5th frame in, in the medium box. Hopefully one week later we will find a queen cell where we notched and be able to place the medium box on it's own bottom board, already splitting the hive into two. We placed a new frame of foundation in the deep as there was room after removing the old frame feeder. We also scratched one frame of honey as feed in the deep. Because of predicted cold temperatures, I also placed a quart of sugar syrup (a 1:1 ratio of water and sugar) above the hive in an empty deep box, as extra feed.
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| A frame of sealed brood |
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| Bees welling up over the top bars, the light colored wood is the frame of new foundation we placed. |
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| The white are uncapped larvae, orange is pollen, reflective open cells are honey and rest is sealed brood. |
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