May 9, 2012

5/9/2012
Checked hive and queen is now out of her box. Put the frame I removed the other day back into the hive. Closed hive up. Still using 1 brood box in this hive. Will check for eggs/brood in about a week.

5/4/2012
New queen arrived in mail. Pulled the cork and placed the queen box in the middle of the frames. Temporarily removed one of the frames.

5/2/2012
Took hive 100 yards from its normal location and dumped all bees onto the ground. Scraped out all done cells on frames. I moved a frame of brood along with worker bees from the good hive to the bad. This should produce worker bees until the new queen starts laying eggs.

4/26/2012
Mail ordered a new Russian queen from Kelly Bees. Ordered one that is marked so it will be easy to find in the hive.

4/25/2012
Took my bad hive 100 yards from its normal location and dumped all bees onto the ground. Returned the hive to original location and removed the top brood box. This actions is supposed to result in getting rid of the laying worker bees. This are workers that have started laying infertile eggs since the queen is missing from the hive. The infertile eggs will only produce drones, not workers. Eventually your hive will die due to lack of workers. The theory with dumping the bees is: since laying worker bees never were out of the hive, you dumping them on the ground at least a 100 yards from the hive location and they won't be able to find their way back. We'll see if this works!!
Time to order a new queen.

4/?/2012
Added queen excluder and honey super to the good hive.

4/?/2012
Removed feeders from both hives.