2nd split

I decided to take a better look at hive #2, our strong hive, and see if there are swarm cells, if they need more space, etc.  Whereas other years I've had difficulty with the hive being honey bound early, this hive has a problem of being brood bound.  This queen is some egg layer!  The hive is so full of brood, capped and otherwise, that I thought I would add some brood to hive #1 which, if it has a new queen who will begin laying within the next several days, will need newly emerged bees to help with the work of taking care of the new eggs/larva, gather pollen/nectar, etc.  You can see the solid laying pattern in the photo below, with just a few drone cells along the top edge.

 Although I didn't find the queen, I found plenty of brood, capped as well as very young.  I put the frame above into hive #1, then put a similar frame, with bees, into the little 5 frame nuc box below as well as a frame of honey and one of pollen and nectar.  I finally found a frame with some eggs and young larva and put that into the nuc as well.  I set it on the far side of the prairie.  With luck, We'll be up to 3 hives in about a month's time.

The queen cell in hive #1 was empty and mostly removed by the bees.  According to the calendar, she should be able to start laying eggs early next week.  I just hope there were enough viable drones around to be able to mate.

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