Confirmation Split was Success P/W Hive
Earlier in the season I took several old dark brown brood frames from an overwintered hive and scraped them down to the Plasticell foundation.
I didn't have any extra new foundation to give to the newly split hive (the purple/white hive), but I did want to cull some of the dark comb out, so I scraped it down and gave it back to them.
I wasn't able to remove the bottom of the cells completely, since the raised cell pattern of the Plasticell prevented me from scraping it completely clean, and I wasn't sure how they would react.
I gave it back to them, and now in the picture below, you can see they've gone through and started removing the bottoms of the cells for me and thrown them out the front of the hive.
It sort of looks like someone stood over the landing board and dumped a bunch of 3-hole punch-outs all over the landing board.
Below is another frame which I scraped down to the Plasticell foundation, and while you can't tell from the photo, they've already re-drawn the wax. In fact, the queen was laying eggs as fast as she could into the newly re-drawn frame, even before some of the cells were fully rebuilt.
Moving down further into the brood box, I could see frames with capped brood, and confirmation the queen has got a nice strong brood patten going!
After seeing capped brood, I've declared my split (and introducing a new queen) successful.
They're already drawing out the foundation in the second deep. Maybe in a week or two they'll be ready for a super!
Something funny I noticed with regards to the hive-top feeder and this particular colony, is that although I filled both sides of the feeder to maximize the amount of syrup available to them, they will only consume it from one side, the side facing the front (landing board) side of the hive. In the past when I've used the hive-top feeder, the colonies usually consume from both sides equally.
I wonder if it's just coincidence, or that once they discovered a side they stayed with it, or that maybe they've orientated the front of the hive (exit to outside world) with the same side of the feeder.
The front of the feeder was empty, and the back was still full with no one taking interest in it. Actually, it was showing signs of crystallizing and dirt/ants/etc were floating in it, so I left it and refilled the front empty side. Almost immediately bees came back up and took syrup from the front refilled side.
They'll only need syrup to finish drawing 5-6 more frames in the top box and then they won't get any more syrup from me anyway.
I didn't have any extra new foundation to give to the newly split hive (the purple/white hive), but I did want to cull some of the dark comb out, so I scraped it down and gave it back to them.
I wasn't able to remove the bottom of the cells completely, since the raised cell pattern of the Plasticell prevented me from scraping it completely clean, and I wasn't sure how they would react.
I gave it back to them, and now in the picture below, you can see they've gone through and started removing the bottoms of the cells for me and thrown them out the front of the hive.
It sort of looks like someone stood over the landing board and dumped a bunch of 3-hole punch-outs all over the landing board.
Below is another frame which I scraped down to the Plasticell foundation, and while you can't tell from the photo, they've already re-drawn the wax. In fact, the queen was laying eggs as fast as she could into the newly re-drawn frame, even before some of the cells were fully rebuilt.
Moving down further into the brood box, I could see frames with capped brood, and confirmation the queen has got a nice strong brood patten going!
After seeing capped brood, I've declared my split (and introducing a new queen) successful.
They're already drawing out the foundation in the second deep. Maybe in a week or two they'll be ready for a super!
Something funny I noticed with regards to the hive-top feeder and this particular colony, is that although I filled both sides of the feeder to maximize the amount of syrup available to them, they will only consume it from one side, the side facing the front (landing board) side of the hive. In the past when I've used the hive-top feeder, the colonies usually consume from both sides equally.
I wonder if it's just coincidence, or that once they discovered a side they stayed with it, or that maybe they've orientated the front of the hive (exit to outside world) with the same side of the feeder.
The front of the feeder was empty, and the back was still full with no one taking interest in it. Actually, it was showing signs of crystallizing and dirt/ants/etc were floating in it, so I left it and refilled the front empty side. Almost immediately bees came back up and took syrup from the front refilled side.
They'll only need syrup to finish drawing 5-6 more frames in the top box and then they won't get any more syrup from me anyway.
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