It becomes how important is it. I am too good a shot to miss, and if you shoot them in the knee they sue you, lol
In the meantime, both queens lived through installation. Hive 1 had gone quietly queenless, it was the cutout hive from the water valve box about a month ago, full of honey, still had a good bee count but not one egg nor larva in 2 boxes and no sign of a queen. Reaction neutral to positive to the new queen, so I'm fairly sure I'm right.
I peeked in hive 2, saw larva in the top box last night, it really probably should go down to one box on the too much real estate rule, couldn't go through the bottom, dusk was approaching. This is the box I will probably swipe a couple of frames from for the trap out bees I gave Ledifini, to try to get that nuc up to 4 frames while he builds his 8 frame.
Hive 3 was 2 deeps and a medium this morning. The medium only had a couple of frames of comb in it, and one partial, well there were 3 frames til I grabbed a frame of drone brood, checked for mites in a couple of cells, found one, and decided it was freezer bound. the rest were empty foundationless frames and a couple of plasticell.
I set the medium aside on my little table hive stand, put its feeder lid on and went into the top deep. Eggs, honeycomb, bees, about 3 empty frames. didn't see the queen, set it aside on top of the sbb I intended to use for my split and put a telescoping cover on it.
The deep bottom box I went through twice. 3 empty plasticell frames, 7 frames of brood and food, brood all capped and due to hatch out. No queen. They started getting irritated when I dropped a frame, but a little smoke and sweet talking and that was all ok. NO queen. This is my best VSH queen, golden, blonde legs, just absolutely drop dead gorgeous. Well I have decided the 2.5 full frames from the medium are going in the bottom deep after I chased down and killed about 6 small hive beetles. so I am pulling frames out of the medium, brushing them over the bottom deep, when I get to the 2nd honey frame who do I see but my beautiful golden queen. By this time the bottom deep is getting full, I don't want to roll her getting the frame in, and the bees that have been pretty calm all this time suddenly hit panic mode. I managed to get her frame in, got a glove buzzing where a few ladies crawled in to see if they can find skin, and have ONE frame left to go, a foundationless with some brood comb her ladyship could really use to lay in.. Had to run for the shed, close door, shake out bees, go back, pick up the frame she was on, queen is not there. checked face of the next frame and hastily put it all back together, empty medium with all empty frames on top. There were at least 4 queen cells in the hive, not laid in or capped, and the frame of drone brood, so hopefully I have averted the swarm, and can now feed them and they will put on winter stores. They have plenty of pollen stores, I got about half their honey stores when I swiped the top deep,
And now hive 4, top deep from hive 3, has about 7 frames, some brood, some eggs, some honey, 3 empty frames, and when I pulled the queen out of my pocket they immediately tried to attack the box. This queen came at 11 THursday morning, she needs a hive, so I smeared the box with wax and propolis and when they still looked hostile I stuck my hive tool in some of their honey and kind of smeared that on, and stuck her to a frame with the gooey stuff. They were so busy cleaning up spilled honey they aren't noticing the queen. Hopefully all will smell right soon enough..
Now I have to go swap some fish and look at a couple of ponds...
Gypsi
