Garden Bees

In contrast to the semi-organized chaos at home the bees at the Botanical Gardens are coming along very nicely, and so far predictably!  I went down to look through them today, and also to expand the hive.  When I left the hive a couple of weeks ago I left it with a single super under a single deep.  I had been hoping that the super would clear itself of brood as and when the queen moved up into the deep to start laying there. 

Well, she appears to have done as expected and there is plenty of brood in the deep, but there is also some brood remaining in the super.  So rather than disturb the brood nest and move the super and deep around I simply added the second empty deep to the top of the hive.  The bees will now have more room to expand into and I reckon I made this expansion at just the right time! 

In a week or so I will take a second super down to the hive and I will properly reorganize it.  I will move the super with brood to the very top of the hive and put the new empty super between the top deep and the top super.  As long as the queen is not in the super when I move it she should not cross into the new empty super from the deeps below.  Hopefully when I get to this stage I will be able to tell if I can split this hive.  I have some queens arriving on April 7th so I might take a nuc box to the gardens and put 3 or 4 frames in it! 

All in all the Garden Bees are looking good!