Well the bees are nice and cozy now. They have their mouse guards on the hive, their quiltbox is on top of the hive and everything was basically all wrapped up on October 16th of this year. So now it is wait and see if we did everything right to make sure that they can make it through another winter. There of course are all kinds of predictions of if this is going to be a warm or cold winter. Regardless if the bees have enough honey weight they should be able to make it through.
The past two years we have had some moderate success in getting the bees into the next season. This year we had one hive that was honey bound by the beginning of May. My goal for next year is to once again increase numbers of hives. So from now until the spring it will be down in the basement building boxes and frames. I have a few screened divider boards too. Based on some reading using these to make spilts can be helpful since it will keep the heat of the hive up even as you split the bees. Last year I think I had a few times where I was stressing the bees out based on the temperature fluctuations in the spring when I was making splits. I am hoping that this will resolve the problem.
I should be able to make at least three splits using this method if things go right. I have made it so that I can put two 5 frame boxes over the 10 frame box. The hope being that if I can split have into more than two colonies this will help me achieve that. So at this point it is wait and see.
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