I Need To Do This To Make Things RIGHT

Right, so the carnage that you can see at the moment is where I've shaken out John's small cell bees because they've gone drone laying. But the experiment can't end there. It's ended because I let the bees swarm, queen didn't mate, turned into a drone laying queen, and that's the reason that that colony failed. Nothing to do with varroa, although the varroa levels may have seen them off later on this year, we do not know. So what am I going to do with all of these small cell frames that I've got here? I'm going to try and merge them into this massive stack next to me here. I'm going to stack the boxes up underneath. I'm going to find the queen in this colony and I'm going to put her downstairs with that small cell foundation. All I'm doing is adding in new space underneath, going to be small cell foundation, and I'm just going to get the queen to move over from the comb in the brood box at the bottom of this stack into all of these boxes over here. I've shaken off all of the bees, so the bees are not really going to know what's going on. Hopefully they don't kill the good queen in here, but as long as we shake them all off, we should be good to go. Right, let's get inside and we'll do small cell bees version 2. So it's a pretty decent-sized colony there. I've got 2 supers that aren't quite full, but then I've got a brood box there that is pretty much rammed, and then another brood box full of honey as well. So a good-sized colony to start this one off. What's going to be really interesting is the fact that these are big bees. And we're doing basically a shook swarm over into some new combs. I know it's not foundation. This is going to be a real experiment, but it's definitely worthwhile doing it considering I messed up the colony over there. Right, so first thing I'm doing is I'm getting the floor and the old brood nest, giving them a tap to make sure that there's no bees in there, because there probably is a runty failed virgin knocking around somewhere in here, but she's going to be in the long grass now, and when she tries to get back in, the The bees in there will kill her because they think they're queen right with the new queen. I'm going to put this back on the spot of the original failed hive over here, and then I'm going to start transferring frames over. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to find the queen and get her into this new box. Right, so beautifully friendly bees. These are a local mated, probably F3 or F4. Really beautifully friendly. Definitely not what we want. However, we are going to try and make this work. So I'm going to get in there now, see if I can find the queen, and I'm just going to take out a frame, couple of frames of stores, just so I can give the queen something to go on when I put her in this new box here. So just a couple of empty frames, little bit of stores. I know they've got some empty cells on there as well, but there's nothing else on these frames. Shaking them off, and I'm just putting these into the new box over here. Got some nice plastic frames here, very well-mated queen. So this is just brilliant. This queen is the queen that was the original queen in my small cell colony. If you remember, I found her when they were about to swarm and I introduced her into the colony next door. Now I've only just remembered this, and the reason that I realized it is because I'm seeing signs of bald brood in this colony. And we remembered, we thought that this queen had genetics that meant that she was a little bit varroa sensitive. And her offspring would groom out of those cells and give you some bald brood. Jon, we're starting it from scratch. The same queen, the same size foundation. Hopefully this is going to work. And I have to say, it kind of explains why these bees are so tetchy as well. Yellow-marked small cell queen. Let's get her back in her original box. Right, so I'm going in, I'm picking up the queen. There she goes. Always like to make sure I've got a good handle on the queen. She's pretty good. Picking her up by her thorax is where I like to pick them up, and I'm placing her onto the new frame in there. She is now in this box here, and even better than that, she's just fallen down onto the floor. So I'm going to be really, really quick here, fill this box back up, shook swarm all of the bees from this live boiling box here into this new one. With their queen, double brood it all with small cell, stack everything up to the ceiling, and then we will come back and see what this colony is like in a few weeks. Right, so I'm taking all of my old drone comb and the empty small cell foundation. I'm going to put it back in the original box. So what we'll have in there is everything set up as it was, just small cell foundation. I put the old queen from next door I'm going to put your fully mated queen back inside this box, and I'm going to stack it up double brood. So this is the double brood box here. What I'm just going to do is just shake these bees out, not into that hive because they might not like the queen. I'm just going to shake them out here in front. You can see them all dropping out there. Just want to get the majority of those bees out, really super friendly bees. Cheers, John. And that's going back on there as well. Then One queen excluder. That's going on top. Then I'm getting my queen excluder. I'm gonna put that on top. And then I'm taking the brood box from the other hive and placing that up there as the first super. Full of brood at the moment, but all of that brood will emerge. Queen is downstairs in the queen zone, in the brood nest with small cell foundation. Little bit risky, this strategy, but I reckon it'll probably work. Pandemonium here. The bees don't know what's going on. I don't think they're gonna kill that queen. So I'm just gonna shake the rest of the bees in. There we go. Now I'm going to start stacking everything else back up, all of the supers on top. Fingers crossed, we'll come back in a few weeks and we will have a queen-right colony again. So there we go, all complete. The old queen that was originally in the small cell foundation brood nest that I moved elsewhere is now back in the original small cell foundation brood nest. Lots of bees in there, got a queen excluder in between, and then the The third brood box there is full of brood from the adjacent colony. All of the bees should merge together. Hopefully they won't fight too much. Fingers crossed. We come back in a few weeks and we will have a queen white colony on small cell foundation, and we can keep the experiment going.