Did I lose my small hive?

I have been filling the small feeder's jars every other day until we were gone this past weekend. I got home last night and checked the hives - suddenly the small hive did not eat the sugar syrup while I was gone. Today I looked and it seems there are hardly any bees in the small hive. Ahhhh.

These are hungry little bees

This morning, Sept 8, I checked the hives' feeders and the small hive was empty again!
Filled them up.
Large hive is fine
sept 10, filled small hive and large hive feeders
sept 11, filled small hive feeders
sept 13, filled one jar in the large hive and both jars in the small hive

I also processed the beeswax but it is too much work for very little wax, so I won't do it again!

Took the top boxes off

Saturday August 27 2016
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.

Opened the boxes to check if I can harvest honey

August 13

I smoked the small hive B and put the queen excluder between the top and 2nd box. This was Saturday morning between 9:15 and 9:30 am.

I took the large hive A apart but there was brood in the top 3 boxes as well as capped pollen so I removed the bottom box and put the feeder box on Hive A. So now there are 4 boxes. I think I'll try to remove the top box/honey in September. One issue is that my top boxes (which I intend to remove for the winter/harvest some honey) are the ones with escape holes, so if I take them off, I'll have to drill holes in the "next" top boxes :)

There seems to be plenty of honey throughout the combs but there isn't one solid box of honey.

I used the smoker, the string technique and wedges to separate the boxes and I put a big piece of cardboard down to prevent "robbing."  I set the boxes on the cardboard so if any honey would spill, I could remove it from the scene.

August 14

Sunday I took the top box off of the small hive but when I examined it, about 4 of the 8 combs which I removed there was way too much brood, so I replaced the combs exactly where I had removed them from and put the feeders on Hive B.

I took the large hive apart but ended up putting it back together because there was a lot of brood and larvae. I pulled some larvae and none of them had any mites on them. But I have not done a formal mite check/count.  I put the feeder back on Hive A

August 21

Checked the feeders, and will need to fill them tomorrow. Carpenter ants are in the sawdust of hive B and as I was trying to brush them away, an irritated worker stung me in the left cheek!!! Methylprednisolone and Diphenhydramine begins :(

August 22

Sunday, I checked the feeders and topped up the jars on Hive B, the one jar on Hive A was empty so I filled it but the second jar was 2/3 full so I left it.  I wore my veil today!! Angry little workers this time of year.

This is the top box of Hive B before I took it apart for inspection:

 Mark took these pictures (explaining the finger) but this shows a comb with some capped honey, capped pollen, nectar and larvae.

 Here is a close up of the comb:

Every larva I look at, looks like this, no mites the way I see them photo'ed from other hives:

Here's the video as I removed the top bar/comb to look at it:

3 3/4 quarts of beautiful honey

So I still have some left to press out of the combs but the 4 combs yielded nearly 4 quarts of honey - yum! Here are the 8 oz bears and then there were two 1 quart Mason jars as well:

pulled some honey with help from my friends

Today, it was nice around noon, prior there were thunderstorms.
Warm out so Tom and Michelle came out and we opened both hives.
I used the fishing the technique after I propped up the corners with small wedges.
Once separated and smoked, we took off the top box from hive A (the big hive) and pulled 2 combs of honey off. We also took the 5th box off, so now there are 5 windowed boxes.

This is the top box from which we had just removed 2 combs on the left.

 This is the 2, 3, 4th boxes:

 Some of the comb in my bucket before I crushed it:

 So the comb in the bag after I came inside. There is capped honey but open cells too

 Comb from Hive A with extra wax:

We removed 2 combs from the small hive , Hive B. This small hive had ?supersedure cells so may have lost the queen. We didn't look through all of the combs, but there weren't eggs in the one comb we checked.

As I was picking up the comb to put it in my extractor/gravity bucket, I got stung on my right index finger.

Wednesday June 15 2016 Mouse guards

I removed the mouse guards to increase the openings for air circulation, I probably should have done that well before this.