I examined my 2 small hives today and noticed a few things about the larger hive that made me happy to see. The first thing was that I could see bees of various colors all in the same hive. There were orangish bees and blackish bees–must be from different drone fathers. I was happy to see that the colony contains some “dark bee genes.” The other thing that made me happy was to see some very small bees along with larger bees in the same hive. The fact that there are already small bees suggests to my mind that the bees in this hive ought to be able to regress and become smaller. These observations gave me optimism and hope regarding this group of bees.
The second hive (very small colony–smaller of the two–pictured above) I transferred the brood (there were only two combs with brood) to a new box with commercial equipment and surrounded them with frames containing 4.9 foundation. I also added a comb from the old hive that contained pollen and honey but the cell sizes were pretty big, so I put that one on the outside edge of the box so the bees can clean it out and use it to make new comb and feed the brood in the middle. I looked at the 4.9 foundation frame next to the brood comb after 10 or 15 minutes (I had already closed up the hive and put the lid on, but opened it again to add the comb with stores) and the workers were already chaining and working like gangbusters drawing out the foundation on the new comb.
Both of these colonies were in non-standard home-made equipment with foundationless frames. They were both originally from feral swarms. I had to use a saw to cut the frames down to size to fit into the box I was transferring them to. Everything seemed to work just like I had hoped it would. Now to let them go and see how they do. I am in Fukuoka, Japan. Cherry blossoms are in full bloom here.