The Leaning Tower of Bees

On Sunday when we were taking the shallow super of honey from Rachel, we also dismantled the Sylvia hive and put her bottom deep on top of Rachel's two deeps, separated by a piece of newspaper with some small slits in it. Once they eat through the newspaper, the plan is that they will smell right to each other and not have to have a small war. The shallow super pictured on top had some honey started, but was not capped, so we left it there for them to finish. We also added the shallow super we extracted back to the very top of the hive (not currently pictured) for them to finish cleaning the honey out of the cells and hopefully start over again with the upcoming sourwood honey bloom. By late fall we hope to figure out how to get the hive back down to two deeps.

All that is left of the Sylvia hive is her bottom board with a few homeless and unhappy bees. Many of these bees came home after the hive had left. We decided to leave them to their own resources, as they were likely to be most cranky and likely to sting us. The top deep off of Sylvia is going into storage for the time being. The little bit of nectar stored in the bottom of a few frames was left out in another part of the yard, where bees are busily taking it out and back to their hive. When they've cleaned out those frames, we'll store them, too.