Are the Girls Thinking of Swarming?

Building comb on the inner lid cover

Two of our three hives have been so active we decided we'd take the first good warm day (today) and check them out and divide. Well, we went in today and Queen Madeleine's kingdom was booming but no signs of imminent swarming except for the fact she's laying many, many drones. No backfilling, no queen cells.

Since there were lots of fresh eggs we decided to divide anyway and let the bees in the queenless box raise a new queen.

We split up the bees and moved Madeleine (She's a pretty gal!) and company to the back of the yard where we are starting a satellite bee yard. We closed the hive to keep the bees in and gave that hive about two quarts of sugar syrup. We'll give them a few days to get acclimated to their new location and then open up the door. We'll call the new Queen Lauren when she appears.