Super time!

The bees are now well established in their new brood box with plenty of new bees being produced. Since the queen has more room now they should build up numbers nicely. I still have the old box in place with a queen excluder between to stop her laying in the old box. I will give them another week with the old box in place - there should be no brood left now but they may move their honey stores up from there. I put a honey super ontop 2 weeks ago. Initially I put it on with a queen excluder below it but after a week they were still not interested so I did as Ted Hooper suggests and took out the queen excluder to get them interested. It seems he was right (no surprise there then) and within a few days they were drawing comb. Put the QE back.
Did an inspection today and there is half a frame of honey in the super!!! Plenty of eggs, unsealed and sealed brood in main box.

Wow, an exciting weekend!

So, I go and do an inspection on Friday, it was a lovely warm (20 C) day - they have gone crazy! They have built extra comb up through the crown board and into the roof space - about 5 columns of it containing honey and brood. Help! I scraped it all out and went through the brood chamber - no queen cells but very crowded in there. I think I was about 2 weeks too late putting on a super. There is obviously quite a nectar flow on right now. Could be something to do with a huge field of Oil Seed Rape (OSR) half a mile away behind Sainsbury's that has come into flower this week. Not sure what to do so shut it all up and came home and phoned Paul my mentor. He said I had 2 options:
1. Add a super and get some honey!
2. Take this opportunity to move them easily into the bigger Commercial box by putting it on top - the theory is they will move up into there, draw out the foundation on the brand new frames and then the queen should move up as she prefers laying eggs in fresh comb and there is more room.
I have gone for option 2 as this is my main objective this Spring. So, I went back and put a Commercial box with empty frames on top of the old box. (I had to use my old box for now as I am still waiting for my new ones to arrive but this is an emergency!!!)

I returned 2 days later with Steve (as helper) and Matt (as photographer) to:
Change the floor for a new Varroa floor, add some Varroa treatment ( Api Life Var) and to feed them some 2x1 syrup.
Checked the top box and they have drawn comb on most frames and there are eggs! In just 2 days!!

 Saw the queen and realised it was good opportunity to put the queen excluder between the 2 boxes to keep her in the top. Pauline brought it up for us and we slotted it in. Brilliantly, we forgot to move the feeder before we tilted the top box and ended up pouring syrup through the hive! Never mind, the bees will clean that up.

So, half the job is done. Did not need those filler frames I made last week but they are a long way towards moving house into a much bigger property with relative ease. Still so much to learn.
Big thanks to Steve and Matt today.