MQ Hive goes on vacation

The Miracle Queen hive was moved across town this morning at 0600. Despite the early hour there were some bees out that didn't make the trip. Maybe a dozen. Sealed them up, strapped the hive together and trucked them about 3 miles away. Chris and Maggie helped me with this. Mainly, with the kayak carrier in the truck it's hard to put heavy packages in the bed, so enjoyed the help, AND the breakfast afterwards. The girls weren't real happy with the move. The instant the tape was pulled away they came boiling out, but not in attack formation. They came out and were probably prepared to sting someone, but we backed away a few feet and no one was threatened.

In a week we'll truck them back to Chris' yard, where they will be merged with his swarm hive. Which queen to keep???!

Add new supers

Well, no time to harvest honey right now, so added new super to both hives. Only 2 frames (swarm) have wax, rest are bare frame material.

Package hive:
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top cover
inner cover
super (new, empty)
super
queen excluder
super (from overwinter)
hive body
hive body
bottom board
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Swarm hive:
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top cover
inner cover
super (new, empty)
super
super
queen excluder
super (from overwinter)
hive body
hive body
bottom board
------------

Ready for more frames

Hive body, MQ hive. Bees now working most of frames.

Pkg hive top super. Lots more bees. More honey.

Swarm hive. More bees and more honey

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Has been hot and dry. Near record breaking. One day my therm said 101 deg. Some pollen coming in. The mint plant is flowering and there were quite a few bees on that this morning. Other garden flowers are flowering.

Have stopped feeding MQ.

Looked in all hives today. MQ bees on 75-80% of frame surfaces. Looks like fair amount of honey being put up. Lots of new blond bees. Ready to add a super or, better, merge with Chris swarm hive. Which queen should live?

Pkg hive. More workers. Top super has a lot of capped honey, much further along than on 6/28. Time for a new super.

Swarm hive. Ditto pkg hive. Time for a new super. The recruitment of new workers indicates there is a fertile queen. Hive activity on both this and pkg hive tells me that things are probably all well down below.