The remnants of Lee gave this area our third largest flood in history and kept the bees in eating their stores for a good four days.  But alas the rains lifted and finally left, and I was able to get all of my rearranging done.  Dummy boards are in where needed and I’m now on a feeding regimen and hoping to get the hives quite weighty before the cold comes.  There should be quite a number of weeks of foraging left.  I don’t plan on really entering the hives much more this season if at all.  They queens are laying, the comb equalized, and I’m happy with the layout.  All that’s needed from an internal perspective is to fatten them up so to speak as most all were on the light side, but after starting with nothing but packages and then stealing from the rich to give to the poor, that’s not surprising.  I’m now truly focused on survivability for the winter.

As a revisit from a previous post, the nuc combine seemed to go off without a hitch.  The newspaper was well chewed and the bees nicely mingled when I opened them to add there final dose of comb.  I was a little concerned since I found another queen cell at the bottom of one of the Alahambra frames.  I cut it out and went through the bottom and found the queen.  I put her back as gently but as quickly as I could and closed them back up.

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