The Demaree method is working at least in terms of swarm prevention. The bees do end up making a few queen cells up top, and in two hives also a couple of queen cells in the lower box with the queen. There aren’t as many I as I would expect to see during swarm prep, so I’m guessing that the complete brood nest rearrangement is triggering a supersedure response as the open brood and queen pheromone become separated and the bees perhaps suspect the queen is failing. So far I’ve been either destroying these cells or moving them into nucs.
I re-implemented the Demaree method 12-13 days after the first shuffle, moving mostly-empty frames and emerging brood down with the queen and moving all of the open and capped brood from the lower box up top away from the queen.
Goosefoot Bees: #1 and #7
These colonies are more or less identical, right down to the colors of the bees and queens, despite one having a two-year-old queen from a Ruhl nuc and the other and one-year-old queen from Old Sol. They are still booming and have enough new pollen and nectar stored to be “over the hump” in terms of starvation risk. Not sure yet if we will get early-spring honey.
I found two capped queen cells in the top of #1 that I missed on an earlier inspection. These went into a nuc with three frames from #1 and two frames from #7.
Homestead Bees: #5, #6, #8
Colony #5 is winning the honey race, and I am kicking myself for not giving them a second super earlier. Their super is about half filled, and they have been backfilling brood cells in the top brood chamber as soon as the brood emerges. That means that the frames moving back down with the queen have limited space to lay, which could prove problematic though I’m hoping the bees will opt to move the ripening nectar up to the supers. The maple nectar resource is essentially unlimited in the surrounding forest, so if the weather holds for the next couple of weeks we should definitely have some to extract. I really need to pull some bees and frames out of this hive, but it has the unfortunate 3/4-deep brood chambers for which I have no spare frames. Will have to settle for shaking bees into a nuc next week.
Colony #6 is in good shape, though with somewhat less fresh honey compared to #5.
Colony #8, the tree bees, has a failing queen. They are still not building up, and the brood pattern is somewhat erratic with drones mixed in with worker brood. They are starting supersedure, and I plan to leave them to it in the hope of perpetuating the feral bee genetics. A bit disappointing to see the queen give out after so much trouble trapping them out of the oak, but with one dink and four booming hives I won’t complain too much.
Time to make some plywood nuc boxes…