Gosh darn crazy bees are driving me nuts.

I decided to begin my transition from 10-frame deep and shallow boxes to all 8-frame mediums, and I began the process today. I added a new smaller box to each of my three hives. Now they look a little bit lopsided and goofy, but transitions are tough, I tell you.

Anyway, as I was checking things out in the hives, I discovered a number of queen cells in Tomboys (yes, I should have taken a picture for you, but I forgot again). Crap. Which means I need to make a split of that hive or risk losing half its bees to the woods. But I’ve never split a hive before. I swear, I always have to do these things before I’m prepared…I haven’t though this situation out yet. Oh well. What do I have to lose, Reader, but a bunch of bees?

I’d better do it tomorrow or risk their swarming while I’m out of town.

So, as I understand it, to make a split I need to separate my current two deep brood boxes and create two separate hives from them…one hive will contain the queen cells, and the other hive (hopefully) contains the current queen. If something should happen to the queen or the queen cells as I’m making this split, the bees will probably rear another queen…so long as there are eggs and/or uncapped larvae in some of the frames.

I guess that’s my job for tomorrow. Split Tomboys into two hives and add another 8-frame medium super to one of the newly created colonies so they have room to grow. Before I know it, I’m gonna have yard full of beehives. Deb’s gonna kill me. She’s already very very worried about driving to the farm with one or two bee colonies in the back of the car.