Crosswired super frames

After last weekend's check and lifting those heavy supers, I figured I should get some more supers on.  But I was also tired of breaking comb when extracting honey, so I bought some frame wire and tools to install it.  I put together a new super and new frames with foundation.  I don't know why it's taken me so long to try cross-wiring my frames; it wasn't that hard.  I bought a wire crimper that is helpful in making the wires very taut.  I don't have any equipment to embed the wires (melt them into the foundation), but for supers where they're just putting in honey, I'm hoping that won't be a problem and they'll just build out the comb around the wires.  Time will tell... I'd like to build an electric embedder, but not sure when I'll get around to it.

Since I only had one more super with 10 frames of foundation ready, on this weekend's trip to the hives, I split it up and swapped 2 or 3 foundation frames for full frames in each of the hives.

Hive A was looking a little better this week.  They had a couple queen cups with royal jelly that they didn't have last week, so it looks like they're working on raising a queen.  I swapped them a frame with eggs and larva from hive B, just to help out.

Hive B is doing just grand.

Hive C is starting to worry me a little.  I went through some of the deep frames closer and they didn't really have many eggs or brood.  What they did have looked good, but I decided to give them a boost as well and swapped a frame of eggs and brood from hive B into C.  I'll keep an eye on them and see if the egg laying increases.  Hive C did seem a bit more agitated than normal as I went through their frames, which can sometimes be a sign that they're not happy about their queen situation...

Hive D is still odd.  Lots of honey in the upper deep, but they're still keeping lots of comb open for the queen.  Heck, they didn't even start to draw out that brand new deep foundation frame I put in the center of the upper deep a week ago.  Like in hive C, what eggs, larva and capped cells I do see look good.  I was just expecting more of them...

I haven't seen any queens in C or D for a while, so maybe I should look closer for her next time.

Laying workers

Checked the hives today and things are going great in B and C.  Hive A has a laying worker.  This I know because I only found drone cells and they were very spotty.  Instead of trying to introduce a new queen, I'm trying to deal with it using the method described by Michael Bush where I will add a frame or two of open brood and eggs every week for three or four weeks and let the hive work things out by raising a new queen.  Based on this, I took I swapped empty frames from A with frames of eggs and brood from B and C.  I'll continue doing this for a couple weeks and check on the progress.

Hive D is still really honey bound in the upper deep.  It does have some good looking eggs, larvae and capped cells, but not as much as I was hoping.  The laying pattern looks good, so I'll just wait for now and give them some time.  I did remove one fully capped honey frame from the top deep and replace it with foundation just to give them some more space.

When checking the hives, I had to lift off all the supers and they were really heavy.  It's only been two weeks since we harvested, so I'm assembling another super or two with some woodenware parts I have in the basement.  I'll put those on when I'm done and adjust the new suuper foundation frames amongst the hives as needed.