Update:
we were out of State a couple weeks and our bees swarmed
unable to capture the swarm in a tree touching the power-lines.

now we wait

Good thing is you get a nice fresh Queen to start for next year

We opened the hive yesterday and found a thriving hive
did not find the new queen but plenty bees, milk brood and fresh eggs
We removed our first 2 honey frames to make more room for brood
The honey super was 90%full of nectar but not much capped yet

Woo hoo! That's great, Cinda!

Our first honey

Awesome, and congrats!

I love the beautiful, pale color! How incredibly cool it is to harvest one's own honey. Congrats!

It tastes even better than it looks

We found and marked our Queen 👑She is a beautiful golden girl.....We also split the hive. And removed the top honey super....Extracted honey...a busy last week ...photos later.

Fantastic, Cinda! Looking forward to more info and pics, if you have 'em! Sounds like your hive rebounded well from swarming, and that your new queen has been productive. It will be great to be able to track her more easily, now that she is marked. Did you let the paint/marker dry or just set her back on a frame? Or just worked with her on the frame of comb?

Also, I hope you can share more about how you approached the split. We have moved to a double deep format for our most productive hive, but anticipate making a split and are interested in how best to approach it. We have yet to spot that queen.

As for the queen we put her in a marker cage to mark her and yes let the paint dry
Interestingly enough we caught her in a Queen clip then set her on the frames of the top box while finishing the bottom box inspection and she got out of the clip(I suspect with some help from her attendants ) and escaped into the frames and we had to find her all over again

My son does the real bee management and he said our type of split is called the walk-away-split

we put a frame with fresh eggs two frames of brood and two of honey and pollen into a Nuc
shook bees into the box
then checked in 4 days for Queen cells (we have 4 cells)
now we leave alone for two weeks and hope for a new queen.

Helpful little attendants! Savvy bees. Sounds like you have done a great job! How exciting!

With your nuc, does it have an opening so the bees are able to forage and a new queen able you go on her mating flight? And if so, did you locate your nuc far away from the old hive? I'm still unpacking all the bee roles and functions as they age. So much to learn! Would legacy foragers go back to their original hive if it were close?

A walkaway split for our stronger hive is probably what we should consider as well. Thanks very much for the details.

a photo of our nuc ...It has an opening
it is located on the same stand as the full hive , the flying/foragers will return to the old hive but not the nurse bees . they wont leave brood .
We did add some feed (sugarwater) but some times that is risky because it may encourage robbing.


backside

I love that yellow color, Cinda! So fresh and distinctive. Ok, that all makes sense. And the brood will hatch and make new foragers and drones in short order. And those bees will orient to the new hive, even in the initial absence of queen pheromones. Please keep us posted!

Just checked the hives today and marked the new Nuc queen she is a tiger stripe
the hive looks good but didn't see new eggs yet we are about a week early for that

A lot of uncapped honey about 50/50 in the large hive supers
Saw the queen and lots of fresh eggs
also saw a single wax worm trail ...a strong hive should take care of that on it's own



BEE Happy

That looks like bee heaven!

The small nuc was checked yesterday and found small milk brood so our queen IS laying

Woo hoo! Go bees!

Everyone here has been put to bed a couple months ago
tonight, a real test expecting below zero the next couple nights

We were gifted a flow hive from some friends , looking forward to trying it this spring