Today we checked to make sure that our new queen Penelobee was released, and indeed she was! Heres a video!
Sunday, May 23, 2021
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
May 19, 2021 - Installing the new queen!
Today we installed the new queen in our split! Here's a video!
Tuesday, May 18, 2021
May 18, 2021 - Splitting the Hive!
On May 13th we reversed the bottom and top boxes again, so the emptier box was back on the bottom. There were lots of bees, brood and larvae...enough to determine that we can try splitting the hive!
May 14th I put the queen excluder between two boxes. (Dad had forgotten to bring the excluder on the 13th, so I met him at a Target parking lot to pick it up!)
On May 18th I got to split a hive for the first time! This is the first time we've had bees survive the winter, and we've bee building them up for a split. Today I looked for eggs to determine which box the queen was in, and then I was able to split the colony in two. The eggs were in the top box, so we know that's where our queen was.
Eggs!
I moved the fuller deep over to the new stack, and then put the emptier box underneath the box that we found eggs in.
Next we will introduce the new queen, and we'll then have two colonies! Here's a video of the split...
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