Got a very late start, but the day ended well.

First had to pop up to Site R, but FIRST had to secure another bucket - equipment managment is becoming a bit of a challenge.  There was some difficulty securing a food grade bucket and no success whatsoever in securing a food grade lid.

Improvise
     Adapt
          Overcome.

Then to R to replace the medium from last time around on O - meep and shallow there are now beautifully capped - get some extraction supplies and head to Site X.

Pulled 6 deep frames there from where they were parked in K and managed to get them off the roof with too much diffficulty.  The lack of a capping basin was keenly felt, however, and the extractor was found to be missing its base bushing (!!!) and had no lids, the latter a known and anticipated defect.

Improvise
     Adapt
          Overcome.

It went well in the end, if slowly, enlivened by unexpected company, some fresh chamomile tea and an impropmtu baklava.  Of the 6 frames extracted, one was scrapped and the other five were placed, the next day on S in an additional (5th) box.

Two mediums, this time, a 9-frame off E and a 10-frame off O.  All went quite well, though the girls were a bit tetchy by the end and we finished up far too late in the day to replace O's box.

Two words for nocturnal beekeeping:
     Never
     Again.

Pulled a box - well, most of a box - of round sections off E today, leaving a few that were not quite built out and one or two where the lackey loading the frames failed to place rings (dolt!).  

(I've decided to stop using the brand name in writing or conversation.

Sorry, Lloyd, but what have you ever done for me? - not like even the guy you bought the company from came up with the idea himself.) 


Anyway, a few lessons learned:

a.  Brush harvesting is somewhat problematic due to the geometry of the frames (get on it, Lloyd!),

b.  Once frames are bee-less and inside, popping the sections into covers really couldn't be easier;

c.  Most of a box of sections is a lot of sections.


Reloaded the frames and popped the box on O - she's now got a little of everything:
     - A comb shallow,
     -  A shallow
     -  A medium
     -  A meep

all atop a queen excluder over two deeps.


And of course everything but the comb shallow is full...

Again at Site R, following a trip to the hardware store to to get parts for the extractor at Site X.

This time harvested a deep from O - beautiful, light, pale stuff, c. 50 llbs.  Didn't spin the frames until bone dry, but still finished up far too late to get the box back on.

Two words for nocturnal beekeeping:  never again.


There remains to deal with a box of round sections to fetch (looking good!), as well as 2 mediums
 
And the shallow and meep well on their way to being re-filled...

at Site R.

Pulled a shallow and a meep (i.e., box of intermediate depth between a medium and a deep;  why not "deedium"? - because that just sounds silly), 10 frames in the latter and 9 in the former.  Both were from O, leaving 2 (full) mediums, a deep (of unknown completion) and the eternally not-quite-drawn Ross Round super on the site.

It was a rather warm day, upper 80's and high humidity, but the work was done, boxes replaced and clean-up complete before the heavens opened with the fringe of Hurricane ARTHUR.

Honey was a magnificent lemon yellow, with an almost berryish taste  -  quite nice, if I say so myself.  Thankful that there wasn't any more in the frames than extracted, as otherwise I would have needed another bucket:  5 gallon pail full, even with all contents of capping tray left behind at the apiary.

Sadly, it would seem A is still queenless and the attendant nuc, while hatched out, is showing not sign of brood either;  perhaps O should be split.


Need to move a box of empty frames to Site X, as believe 5-7 deep frames there that need to be extracted - "How?" is the question.

Installed a couple of packages this morning - EARLY - and made a bone-headed blunder and missed out on a lesson learned.

The packages were installed on a queenless colony:
     2 packages + 1 queenless colony =  2 queenright colonies (hopefully)

as simultaneous split and dual combination, I suppose.  Anyway, the blunder was to use the newpaper method with empty supers but lay the paper, and packages on TOP of excluders.

[ D'oh! ]

The hive, a dual colony arrangement, was all buttoned up before it was realized that the configuration would have prevented the queens, once released, from moving down into the lower hive bodies but would have allowed them to move up into the common super stack and duke it out for sovereignty over a two package + a colony dominion.

Sigh.

The inelegant but (hopefully) effective temporary solution was to place feeders atop each of the hive bodies containing the packages and queens, covers on the feeders and supers on the covered feeders.  From bottom to top:
     

• Hive bodies with old colony,
• Queen excluders (sigh),
• Newspaper,
• Hive bodies with packages and caged queens,
• Hivetop feeders,
• Feeder lids (sealing them off from above),
• Common honey supers
• Telescoping top cover (left ajar, as there is no inner cover in this setup).
  
  

So from top to bottom,

• Old colony workers can exit (and work?) the supers, but can't get in the feeders and drown,
• Package bees can get at the feeders (really just to get rid of the syrup that came with the packages),
• Package bees and old colony workers from the hive bodies can joyfully unite through the newspaper and
• The queens can hang out in their feeder-topped, excluder-bottomed prisons until someone comes along to let them out and get on with, um, queening.
  

Sigh.


I think I'm going to get a chance to go back and unscrew this mess tomorrow, but I really had planned on being able to leave this location alone for about a week while the acclimation and release process unfolded on its own.  And I wonder if there might be any robbing issues with accessible supers for the moment not really assocaited with a defending colony - the weather was pretty lousy this morning, though...


And aside from the complete lapse in rational thought, there is the forgotten lesson learned:   when installng packages or just caged queens, never start without a couple of marshmallows handy.  One of the packages had a bad candy plug and while I THINK it will be okay, it would have been better to have a marshmallow handy, a lesson learned from unexpectingly encountering corked, not candied queen cages when installing packages from a new supplier.


Hopefully it will turn out well, 
     leaving only another story to tell.


F' 

Got up for a look on this past Saturday, Cinco de Mayo.

Weather was warm (c. 55-60), but it was overcast enough to make visibility less than optimal.  I had to rush a bit to make it to a Derby Party and wasted a good 20 minutes or so clearing a drain and the attendant lake.

Overall things seem to be going well:

Abigail II seems to be making slow but steady progress in her 2 boxes,

Bridget II is positively BOOMING in her 4 - I reversed deeps (again) and moved the Imrie shim to just above the excluder, with the medium on the bottom (I think).

Charlotte II is going gangbusters as well and I had to trim some excess comb, both top and bottom.

Deirdre, I'm happy to report, is doing quite nicely now, and I even got a look at her on the 4th frame of the bottom (!) box.

Above the dual hive is a shim, a medium and a deep - medium is nicely drawn, but empty, while the deep is slowly beginning to fill.