Last Saturday I removed the small hive box (third box) from the top of the hive with which I had combined it. I brushed all the bees off into the top box of the two-story hive after moving two frames of brood up from the bottom box. The bees had not started using the middle box yet. I moved empty frames of foundation down into the bottom box to replace the ones I moved up. After I brushed them off the frames, the bees really filled the air around where we were standing, but none of them stung us or acted agressive. They are really gentle bees. I also saw a queen in the small top box, yet did not know whether that was the only queen there or if there was another queen in the bottom box as well. My friend, Teruo Shiki (the hives are at his house), told me that after I left there were quite a few dead bees in front of the hive, so I assume the reason the second (middle) box was not used at all was that the top queen stayed in the top box and the bottom queen stayed in the bottom box. Since they each had a separate entrance they could use, they just stayed as two separate colonies. When I checked them today, a lot of the second box is now filled with honey and brood and there is good progress being made.
Also last Saturday, we harvested the honey from the small box. The method was crush and strain, and we got about a gallon of honey, which we put into jars. The color is light and the flavor is very mild. It is delicious.
Yesterday (Friday) evening I moved two hives of native Japanese honey bees from the roof of the building where they had been down under some trees into shady areas. Hopefully they will do better and not overheat even if it gets very hot this summer. I haven’t decided whether or not to also move the third hive as well. It is much heavier and will be more difficult to move. It also has more ventilation so may be all right even if left on the roof. I will need to think about the logistics of how to move it.
This morning I removed the “bad comb” from the second hive at Shiki-san’s house and combined all the bees down into one box. Very few of the frames in the bottom box had been built out, and even after combining the bees, they did not fill even half of the bottom box, so I think it was the right thing to do. The frames and combs in the top box were not spaced properly and some of the combs had additional combs built hanging off the face of the first comb, so this box needed to be phased out. Not much of the honey was capped, so the amount we were able to bottle was limited (maybe a quart and a half). The rest was nectar (uncured honey that still has a high water content). We got about a half gallon of the uncured honey, mixed with pollen. I put it into the refrigerator so it won’t ferment or spoil. We will probably use it for cooking and bread making.