I went through my hives at the house this afternoon. They are strong and building but are not in swarm mode yet. I moved queens and brood down and checkerboarded with open drawn comb and capped brood frames above the queen. I moved a lot of the feed frames to my top supers but left honey and pollen frames in the classic position. Not exactly the standard Walt Wright checkerboarding, but close. I opened the brood nest but did not checkerboard the food areas. I don't think there is so much food in my hives that it was necessary to open up the food supers. We'll see.
I took 2 frames of capped brood and nurse bees and used them to boost a very weak but healthy hive that I was surprised to find had made it over winter. I'll look in on this hive tomorrow afternoon to make sure the boost went well.
Tomorrow, I hope to go through my remote hives. These have shims and sugar/pollen substitute bricks on them. I hope they are strong enough that I will have some burr comb clean up to do.
Early March Inspections
Re: Early March Inspections
I went through my bees at Brown Summit yesterday. They are building up and one hive was extremely strong. They weren't building burr comb in shims and they weren't in swarm mode yet. I hope to move some swarms there if we have a good swarm season this year.