Split 2nd hive

Today, Friday April 16th on an overcast afternoon, I met Jennifer about 4pm to split the 2nd hive. Her queen had arrived my mail that morning.

After removing the supers, we began the task of locating the existing queen somewhere on the 10 brood frames completely covered in bees. It is probably a good thing that I split the hive now, as while searching the frames for the queen, I removed several swarm cells.

Luckily for us, we spotted the queen on the 5th frame. The first four frames I had already moved into the new hive. Isolating the frame with the queen, we removed one more frame, giving her 5 full brood frames with LOTS of bees, honey, eggs, larvae, pollen ... everything for a good start. We closed up the existing hive and then proceeded to place the queen in her cage with attendants into the new hive. We closed it up and Jennifer took it to her home for setup. I will check with her in a couple of days to see if the queen was accepted and freely moving about her hive.

I also checked on activity in the two hives I had split 2 weeks ago. I was afraid that all of the bees would mitgrate back into the hive with the queen, since I did not separate this new hive farther than two miles away. To my surprise and delite, both hives had quite a bit of activity at both entrances. I left them alone and I will return another day to look for queens in both hives and do another inspection.

Overall, a successful outing.