Surprise!

I went into my hives the evening of Thursday, Sept. 24 with the expectation of doing the following:

1. Remove honey super from queenless hive with expecation that all frames would be full and capped
2. Remove upper brood box from queenless hive with expectation that some frames would be full and capped
3. At this point all bees in queenless hive would be in lower brood box.
4. Remove two honey supers from 2nd hive with expectation that all frames would be full and capped
5. Remove both brood boxes from 2nd hive and install regular bottom board to prepare for winter
6. Place both brood boxes back with "nest" in bottom box.
7. Place layer of newspaper over top brood box; make small slits in paper
8. Place brood box from queenless hive on top of newspaper; combining the hives

So it was going to be a busy evening for sure.  In Step 1, I removed the honey super and was surprised that not all the frames were capped yet.  Bummer.  I then removed the top brood box (Step 2) and began inspecting the lower box.  I had just seen Dr. Kunkle and he implored me to be very sure that the queenless hive was in fact queenless.  I looked at a couple of the frames and was very surprised to find larve, eggs, and capped brood!  "This hive isn't queenless!"  This of course means all my plans that I had been working out in my head for the last several days if not weeks were all kaput!  "Shnikeys!"

The fact that this hive was not queenless meant that I would not be combining the hives as I had previously thought and not only would I have to leave honey for THIS hive but I would also have to make sure there is plenty of honey in the other one as well.  I had been hoping that in combining the hives, I would also be combining the honey stores...

Anyhow, it was great news that this hive was able to raise their own queen.  My earlier hunt for the queen must have been premature...it does take time for the queen to become mated and to bulk up in preparation for laying hundreds and then thousands of eggs DAILY.

I went and installed the regular bottom board on this no longer queenless hive and put all the boxes back in place.  I then went ahead and checked the other hive.  The upper honey super was full of capped honey frames.  I shook and knocked and brushed the bees off the frames back into the hive and placed the frames into an empty hive box...placing a board over the top to keep bees out.  In the lower honey super, I was able to pull 6 more fully capped frames...the other 4 were not yet fully capped.  I left those and put in 6 empty frames.

Since it was getting cooler, I closed up the hive.  At a later date, I'll have to go back in and install the regular bottom board to keep the cold out some.  Over the weekend, I also put a hive top feeder on this hive to help them fill those empty frames and to make sure they have plenty of honey for winter.  I'll do the same for the "no longer queenless" hive.