I took advantage of the good weather to hive a nuc of 1 deep 6 mediums today. The hive has been booming and I have been adding medium nuc boxes as the numbers grew. I located the queen on a medium frame. I added 5 deep frames of honey to the 3 full deep frames of brood and 2 of nectar and pollen, and put a queen excluder over this box. I will remove the deep after 21-24 days to convert the hive to all mediums. I checkerborded the brood over two medium boxes, and added another medium of open drawn comb for a total of 1 deep and 5 mediums. I saw 2 drones and a fair amount of capped drone brood as well as 2-3 queen cells with royal jelly and larvae. If they decide to swarm and want to take the queen with them they will have to leave from the small entrance at the inner cover.
The bees have been testy in the past, and I was fully protected when I did this. They were good sports until I started removing frames from the deep nuc box. If you have seen the you tube of Lusby bees, you have some idea of what these bees were like. I took a couple of stings an hour or so after I finished the bee work, and a couple of bees went around my neighbor's garage to buzz and bump him while he was pruning his grape vines.
I destroyed some drone brood in separating frames and did not see a single varroa mite.
I don't have any other hives this mean or this strong. Hmmm..........