Hive check today

Took the hive--one medium honey super, and two brood boxes , the top brood box only partially built out --all the way down today.

The honey super was full of bees and had about a dozen hive beetles hiding under the traps. I added more traps (4) and refilled them with a mixture of vegetable oil and apple cider vinegar when I closed up the hive at the end of the check. 

It was a mild day, mostly sunny about 75 degrees, there was a light breeze, occasionally. The bees were very calm.

The center brood box had brood on two frames. They were working on building out more foundation. I have three new midbar frames in as a test. The bees have not yet started building wax out on them. That might be because they are in outer positions.

Before I opened the hive, I had considered reversing the positions of the brood boxes, if the top box was full and the bottom box had no larvae or capped brood in it.

The frames in top brood box had both, and food stores.There were also three very tiny, early queen cells.Two on the bottom of one frame, and one on another frame.

If each one of them has an egg in it, then they will each be capped by February 27th. Seven days later, on or about the 5th or 6th of March, a new queen will emerge. 

Next weekend, 2/26 or 27, I will need to check on those queen cells and make sure they are still good and safe as I do the split. I will also need to be sure the old queen is moved into the new split box. 

If I wait longer than next week the hive could swarm. On the other hand, the drones should begin in merging by next weekend. Below is the life cycle poster I'm working from to calculate this. Drones are sexually mature when they emerge, but need 7 to 10 days for orientation flight.

I checked the drone cells which begin appearing in the last two weeks. I did not see any purple-eyes, yet, it's too early. It takes 24 days from egg to emergence for a drone.

Next weekend will be the time to split. The upper box since it does not have all 10 frames built out,  could very well be put in a separate nuc box. There us good amounts of  food and brood in both boxes. And a lot of bees. 

The bottom box had brood, larvae and food stores in it. I did not check each frame for queen cells as I had seen the three small ones in the upper chamber.

If the weather remains warm, next weekend I will do this first split and see if I can't get them to build up.

They're bringing in a lot of pollen.