Last week I decided to prepare for splitting the hive by putting in queen excluder between the lowest box and the other two boxes when I swapped the order. I put the shallow box, which I thought had the Queen in it, on the bottom. I then put the other two boxes above it. The theory was the Queen would be trapped below. This us swarm season and the hive maybe feeling it necessary to form a new queen cell in preparation for swarming.
On March 21, week later or actually 6 days, when I checked all three boxes I found larvae in the top two. Guess the queen was as in one of them when I put in the excluder last week.
I could not see any eggs because of poor lighting. The shallow box had no larvae in it but was full of capped brood. There was a queen cell -- at least one.
I took that box and built a new hive with a 10-deep brood box on the bottom and the shallow box with the Queen's cell on the top. I put it near, but not in the exact location it had been in.
I then took the remaining two 10-deep brood boxes swaped their order and put a queen excluder between them.
Again, the theory is if the queen is in the upper box when I switch the order she will be in the lower box if you put in a queen excluder she will not be able to go to the upper box and therefore will be easier to find.
I will need to check both hives next week to see what's going on. If for some reason the queen is in the new hive that would mean that the old live with the two boxes won't be queen right and may not be able to make a new queen. I did not check all 20 frames but I did not see queen cells anywhere in the five frames I checked.
When I started, I thought,"This will be a year in my life, with bees." I would chronicle all the steps and stages, all the trials and tribulation. It would bee my journal and outlet as well as my record of beekeeping. That was February. Now, on the other side of summer, it's October. One of the hives has been slimed by small hive beetles. The ladies have absconded. Perhaps, by keeping a closer journal, I -- and perhaps you, dear reader -- will learn more about beekeeping in North Florida.
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Division By Exclusion
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