Quite the last few days at the hive...

It's been an interesting few days here in the apiary to say the least.  I opened it up midday Sunday, hot an humid as it was, but I needed to get in to make sure the bees finished spreading the mite treatment around.  Fortunately, the tray was empty, I guess they did.  That was the good news.

Then we got around to the main inspection.  WOW...the top box which was supposed to be for the queen to make more bees was what they call "honeybound".  That's when all the frames/cells are filled with honey or nectar.  That means, at least in that box, that the queen had nowhere to lay eggs.  This can be a bad thing, because if she feels like she doesn't have enough space she'll create a swarm and go somewhere else with about half my bees.  If she leaves and there's no eggs or 1-3 day old larva left in the original hive, then the remaining bees can't create a new queen and unless you find the swarm or buy a new queen (yep, you can buy queen bees on the internet), the hive will slowly die as the worker bees die out after around 6 weeks.  Unfortunately, the honey in those boxes, although good for bees, is not fit for human consumption...bummer.  When I lifted that top box off to check the bottom brood box it was HEAVY.  Probably 70-80 lbs.  That was the bad news.

I was able to lift it off and set it on the ground and continue my inspection.  The ok news is that there was some larva and capped brood in the bottom box, so my queen appears to still be active.  I did not see any swarm or supersedure cells, where the colony is making new queens.  There was still a lot of honey in that box as well.  They need more room.

Then I had to put it all back, more almost bad news.  Getting that honeybound box off the ground and back on top of the hive was almost more than I could do.  I got it up there but man it was close!  Then to top it all off, I went around the front of the house to un suit and write up my inspection notes.  Usually...usually when you get more that 30-50 feet away from the hive the guard bees will go back home.  But it was not this day.  I'm sitting there cooling off in the shade, typing my notes on my phone and BAM! outta nowhere I get kamakazied just above the left eyebrow.  The swelling is usually only bad first thing in the morning.

Knowing that being honeybound is a bad thing, I started doing research and talking with other beeks (that's what they call themselves) on possible solutions.  Since I don't have my extracting equipment yet, that wasn't an option.  I thought about removing some of the full frames and freezing them until winter to give to the bees when food is scarce, although here in Florida we get some nectar flow even in winter.  The last solution, the one I ended up going with was adding a new box, between the bottom brood box and the upper honey bound box.  

Since I didn't have another deep box of my hive type available and it would take 10 days or more to get one, I bought a wooden box from a local vendor and dove back in.  It's really not good to bother the bees too often, but it's better that than letting them swarm. I added newly waxed frames and am hoping the bees start building comb quickly.  They shouldn't have a food problem while doing that!  It looks goofy, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do...am I right?  What I'm hoping is that they'll draw it out quickly and then when I get 3-4 frames of solid brood, I'll move them to the horizontal hive in what's called a split.  We're still waiting to place that until a tree out behind my fence gets cut down.

A split is when you take some of your frames of brood, food, about half your bees, and the queen to a new hive.  If you do it right, the old queen will have left some new eggs in the old hive and the workers will recognize that she's gone and start making a new queen by feeing one of the newly hatched larva royal jelly.  Once the new queen is born, she'll go on her one and only mating flight, come back and start making baby bees.  Let's hope.

Anyway, here's a 15 minute long video of the process I went through to add the new box.  To save my back at least a little, I used a 5 frame box I have that's used for transporting to hold 5 of the heavy honeybound frames while I moved the box.  You'll see in the video if you watch that far.  Last good news, NO stings today.  I look pretty good in the suit.  Happy viewing!