Haven’t been very good about keeping up with writing.  I split the hive July 9.  Found the queen fairly quickly.  I think the previous inspection she was probably in the bottom box, didn’t see her then.  I only had to pull two frames from the second box to find her this time.  Saw eggs on one side, flipped it over and there she was.  I was then confident I could avoid moving her in the split.  The bottom box was full of capped brood, so I stole 3 of those frames plus a frame of honey/nectar from the top.  As I put the parent hive back together I checked the frame with the queen once again and she was still there, again confident I didn’t move her.  Robber screen went on.  Went back to look about an hour later and there was a huge mass of bees in the robber screen and at the entrance.  I think it was just a matter of all the foragers now wanting back out and to go home.  I let it go for a little while but then plugged up the entrance with some grass.  Waited until fairly late in the day to remove that.  The next day it rained a bit which made the parent hive ignore the small one, which was good.

On Sunday July 11 I drove up to Yule’s and picked up my queen.  The introduction of the queen went has badly as a successful introduction could have gone.  The push in cage I made was too big because the comb never seems to get attached on the bottom.  So I was trying to bend it to shape out there at the hive.  Then the spot I wanted to put it had a hole through the comb, so that was pointless.  I finally found a reasonable spot, released the queen and tried to push it in.  The comb gave a little, certainly not breaking but basically the edges that were all now bent up just didn’t go in.  I did eventually get it to rest into the comb but apparently I left a hole because bees started finding their way in.  Luckily they walked right up and started licking her.  I watched them for about 10 minutes then just pulled the cage off and put her back in.  I opened it again about 30 minutes later just to ensure they weren’t balling her, and she was walking around being ignored…but I certainly don’t think she was laying. She was pretty thin.   After the past two days of a good bit of rain and almost no activity at that hive, they seem to have bees taking orientation flights…or they’re getting robbed.  Have to watch closely.  Now just waiting for Sunday-Monday so I can check on them.

 Lots of rain the past two days, about 3 inches.  We’ll get back to a little bit of normalcy there.

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