Splits and more

So only six weeks since the last pillaging of combs of brood and honey to make three walk away splits - and the TBHs were again bursting and full of comb and honey and brood - so more splits

Earlier in the week I had finally finished the painting of the eleven angstorth style hives i made during school holidays - and my wife could have our carport back for her car. Man those end grains take up a heap of paint. 

I also had to quickly change the style of front entrance landing platform – previous version a bit flimsy

Also did some CAD designing and then 3D printed some hive entrances I could attach to the hives to close off hives during transport. the slide lid can be reversed to close off entrance.

First task once the bee suit was on and the smoker started was to transfer the old splits in shorter TBHs from 7 weeks ago into the eleven new Langstroth hives I had made recently.

To do this, I took two of my shallow super boxes, removed and stored the frames – then to place the two empty shallow boxes on top of the brood box – this to fit in the deeper TBH frames.

It was hoped (and expected) that the bees will migrate down into the brood box frames before adding a queen excluder between brood box and shallow boxes. The TBH frames can be removed for repeated use in splits and such back in to the older TBH boxes– and the shallow frames put back into the shallow boxes for honey collection

Well that’s the plan!

Of the three previous splits – two TBH boxes were absolutely full of brood and pollen, even a bit of new comb with the starting of honey being capped - so an active queen is present – but while she wasn’t seen a very active hive.

After transfer of placing the new box in the old box’s place – the bees where not entirely happy as – wrong shape and colour but eventually the foraging bees found their way in and adjusted by the evening

The one split that didn’t have a queen – was all old workers and heaps of honey but zero brood eggs, larva etc – will add a frame or two of eggs and nursery bees from the big TBHs asap to this one to give it another chance

My Brother-in-law and a mate of his are working on some queens so maybe might get one of those queens - if it happens and is timely for the hive

So two out of three walk aways succeed from last attempt – enthused me to try again

But only enough combs of honey, pollen and brood from the large TBHs for two attempts this time

Sat these two new splits away from other hives on another frame work of 40mm pipe. I used two of the new hives I made here again – so far not much going on but hope the ladies are making their new queen for me

Forgot to grease legs and by morning ginger ants were attempting a coup - Fixed that up right away

Will be 5-6 weeks before I check on these again

The big TBHs were a mess of cross comb and were totally agro at my shifting, moving and cutting frames  - those ladies were surely pissed off at me – really charging the net of my hood with a repeating “thunk” as they hit it.

During the process - got some honey and some comb for personal use – actually, I gave away most of it