And the splits just keep on coming

"By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination," Christopher Columbus ... Big talk for a man who thought he was in India.

If the following blog goes off the rails, forgive me. I woke up at 3:00am with my "Night Dreads." If you're not familiar with my "Night Dreads", it is the phenomenon where I wake up in the middle of the night and begin worrying about the most ridiculous things. Last nights night dread topic: How I would change my life if I somehow traveled through time and was 17 again. At 5:20am I concluded that I would have to go back to age 16 to make any real change but that I would have started building bee hives the moment I arrived in 1990! "There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line." - Oscar Levant.

THE PLAN:
This past Wednesday I had planned to build 10 lids & 10 bottoms and Saturday I would make my 10 splits.

THE OBSTACLES:
When Wednesday came, I allowed myself to be lazy. If failure was a sickness, laziness would be the symptom. I instead told myself, I would build them Saturday and make my splits Sunday.

Well Thursday, on my way to work in Vicksburg, the water pump on my truck began leaking - like a sieve. There was a lot stress and drama involved in getting home but by 6:00pm Saturday, I made it back.

Sunday I bought the new seals for the water pump and while I waited for the truck to cool down, I made the lids and bottoms for the splits. I then spent the rest of the day taking the whole truck apart to put in the seals. Thanks to YouTube, the job went smoothly but it took all day.

So yesterday, Monday 4/30/18 at 5:00pm (after I got home from work) Noah and I went out to Dr. D's to make splits.

THE SPLITS:
We only had time to make 4 splits - A,B,C,D. We started with D and found 5 frames of swarm cells. So we removed them from the box and divided them amongst the other splits.

On split C we found that the box was full of honey but no brood, so we decided to put a frame of queen cells in both boxes. Figuring that it might be missing a queen or just need a better one. However, when we retrieved the the frame with a queen cell, the cell was open and empty. Noah checked the other frames we had set to the side and there she was - the virgin queen. So we grabbed her (gently) and popped her in the hive. So as you can see the splits were just in the nick of time.

I worry that there might be other hives on the verge of swarming but I just don't have time to do anything about it. If all goes well, then Saturday, I will build boxes and wax the old plastic frames. Then Sunday, I will continue with the rest of my splits.

For now, HIVE COUNT: 18 Hives.

Honey Bound - Lots of bees but no brood

I've begun taking before and after pictures
so when I am at home trying to figure out
what the hell went wrong, I have a better record.

Honey Bound: The term refers to a hive that is so full of honey and pollen stores that the queen doesn’t have any place to lay eggs.

So yesterday I went out to split hive (A) that I was sure was on the verge of swarming due to the beard hanging on the front. However, when I got there, the beard was gone. So I entered the hive to see how bad the swarm had hit the hive but to my surprise, the bees were still inside.

Nonetheless, I came to split a hive and so a hive was going to get split! So I started looking for eggs. But there were no eggs. That was when I realized that the only brood was a half of frame of capped brood. The more I looked, all I could find was honey – every frame was filled with honey.

At the time, I didn’t know what to think. The hive was packed with bees (see Pictures) with very few drones but there was no eggs or larva.

I went to hive (B) and it turned out, it was the same thing. I spent two hours inspecting these two hives but all I found was honey and pollen.

Current Apiary Setup (X's are empty hives)

On a side note: Both (A) & (B) were very calm and gentle. There is still about a quart of sugar syrup in hive (A) but hive (B) had eaten all of theirs. Hive (B) has nice large teardrop patches of comb on the foundationless frames I put in Friday, while hive (A) has a couple of small bits of comb – several spots in (A) also had new bur-comb but not much.



So at sundown, I closed the hives back up and headed home. I was perplexed to say the least and I felt defeated. Why were there so many bees but no eggs? Had I actually overlooked the eggs? Was the hive queenless? Was it possible that the queens just had not started laying? (I know that last one seems stupid but I was spiraling.)

No drown feeder with
drown bees in hive (A)

Still, by the time I reached my house, I had a come to a peaceful notion: “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.”

I still had other hives and, whatever the problem was, I could pull eggs from one of the other hives to fix it. With that, I relaxed, went inside, and got on the computer. Thankfully my problem was not unique and with a few tries at Google, I found the answer.

Google question: “My hive is full of bees but no eggs”

The Answer: My hives are “Honey Bound”

I’ve already checkerboarded the top two boxes of both (A) & (B) giving them an additional 10 frames each. So as soon as they draw out the comb it should be fine.

I will double down on my prevention plan by adding more sugar syrup tonight, then Friday I will add two frames of foundation to each as well as a frame of eggs from one of my other hives. Whatever the issue is, these three things should cover it.