I smoked and raised the top boxes, put queen excluders on at 7:30am.
Around 1:30pm I removed those top boxes and put the combs (some with a lot of capped pollen and some brood) into a big black contractor's bag. I then left the feeders on the hives - now each with 3 boxes.
We then left on August 28 for ND for horseback camping.
On September 3, 2016, both jars on the small hive were empty and the large hive's feeder jars were barely touched (but the sugar crystals had blocked the holes so I remedied that). Filled the jars. Some bees were "balling up" on top of another worker bee and appeared to be eating something out of her mouth - this happened with two different worker bees. Then they all dispersed and walked into the hive (this was at the small hive).
I harvested almost 4 quarts of honey and there is more in the buckets as I type this.I will save the pollen to feed in the winter.
The larvae do not have any mites - I even looked under a microscope at them.
On this day, Mark found a ball of bees in the grass - did I accidentally dump out my queen(s) a week ago when I took off the top boxes??? I never saw a queen but there were a lot of bees even though I tried to smoke them down into the hives before I removed the boxes.
On Sept 4, I saw a queen and grabbed her and a clump of workers and put them in a box on the porch. When I looked back at the ball of bees I saw ANOTHER queen and put her with bees in the box too.
Here's the queen - the caramel colored large abdomen, dead center:
Sept 5 was Labor Day and I volunteered at the Honey Booth at the State Fair in the Ag-Hort building and then Tuesday it rained all day but I checked the box and all of the bees were gone. (I was going to cage the queens). Oh well. Time will tell :)
I had to fill one feeder jar on the large hive and both jars on the small hive.
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