Wow! The Bees are Going Gangbusters!

frame of capped and uncapped honey

We did a three-hive inspection today and were thrilled by the results. All the queens are laying and the workers are bringing in nectar and capping honey big time. This looks to be a great harvest season.

Queen Anya's hive was especially busy and there were both swarm cells and at least one supercedure cell in the hive. So we decided to experiment and make a new split. We moved all the queen cells into an empty box. It's late, maybe too late, for that;
but we hope to prevent a late swarm by Queen Anya and company; and we figure we can build up the fourth hive by moving frames from the three others. So we put eight frames of brood, honey, and pollen into the new hive (which we will christen Queen Madeleine) and just one empty drawn frame. We put the eight empty frames in Anya's hive to give the workers there more room.

Rachel's hive is very active. Plenty of laying going on, lots of capped and uncapped brood; but it doesn't need a new box since there are still empty frames to work on. The top box is mostly capped and uncapped honey.

Bianca's hive has lots of capped and uncapped honey but also had brood in the top box. We checked to make sure they had room to work lower down and there were plenty of empty frames.

Summary:

From left to right in the bee yard:

Madeleine: one box with 8 frames of brood, honey, and pollen and one empty drawn frame
Bianca: five boxes with lots of capped and uncapped honey in the top box and five empty frames in the next box down which we cheker-boarded.
Anya: five boxes, lots of honey and brood. We moved eight empty frames from Madeleine's box.
Rachel: three boxes of capped and uncapped brood and honey

To sum up the yard is 1-5-5-3

Go bees!