Split hive brood and honey
I was glad to see capped
worker brood in our new hive since that means our hive split
was definitely a success. I only lifted out the
one frame from their lower brood box to confirm the queen's activity
since the bees had been less than pleased to be poked at last
time. But, even so, I could tell that they've been working hard
because the upper brood box was heavy with dehydrating nectar.
The mother hive was also
doing well, despite losing so many of her workers to the daughter a
month ago. The bees had plenty of uncapped honey and had already
covered over two big frames of 
honey in the upper brood box
and a few small frames of honey in the super. I stole enough to extract a quart and a half since I
used up the last of my honey in our final round of strawberry
leather.
The only downside of a
hive split is that we won't get very much honey from either hive this
year. Maybe I can talk my movie star neighbor into giving us some
of his surplus in exchange for our "acting" on his audition tapes?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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