Got all 3 of my splits home and checked out last week. All doing fine, one exceptionally well. It was cold and crappy when I did the splits about a month ago, but the queens were ordered so had to do it. As I don't use a bee hood, I had to resort to cheapo mosquito net to keep the bees a bit at bay and consequently I didn't do a great job splitting the primary colonies but did make sure to get 3-4 frames of brood and the nurse bees that were on them but wasn't in the mood for what would happen if I tried to shake more into the secondary colonies...as I didn't think the bees would be in the mood for it.
I had to go into the lower brood box on one of the colonies to find the queen and luckily in the other 2 she was in the top box. Had to locate the queens to make sure I introduced the new queens into a colony that was queenless.
I also placed 3 or so honey frames for food in each split that was from the colonies I killed off last fall.
With the cold and wet weather was a bit concerned that the split (secondary) colonies might not have enough food, but when I opened them last week there was still some honey in each and the queens were laying.
That means that I got by with no syrup at all this spring.
Things are look great with the nice weather this morning.
Will have 6 hives/colonies for 2014. Based on past years, that should produce around 400 lbs. of honey to be available to offer customers.
Bringing in a least 3 different kinds of pollen, based on colors, for food for the brood.
