[Yesterdays run: White House, 3 miles; today is a rest day]
Here you can see that we are planning some expansion in the bee yard.Our two traditional box hives are to be split and new queens installed in order to make 4 full hives. The “trough” or top-bar hive will be left alone.
We have decided that we like having a bit of concrete as a hive base. It keeps things from tilting and it is easier to trim the grass.
Here you can see that I have the new bases ready. We have ordered queen bees from a supplier. Those should come via UPS. When they arrive we will have to put on our apiarist equipment and get the job done.
Each of the two hives to be split has three “supers” or boxes of frames, the two lower boxes are for brood (creating more bees) and the upper box is for honey storage. We plan to split the brood by putting one brood box on each of the hives and then add a new box of empty frames. We will then divide the frames in the honey boxes so that each hive gets about half a box of honey to get started.
This may be a sink-or-swim situation since all four hives will be starting from a position of disorder and with a new queen. All the bees will have to get started making new comb to fill up the empty frames and boxes. But we are pretty confident it will work out ok.
