After posting to the CCBA, a fellow beekeeper (Keith) came out to help with our bees. He was surprised to see so many bees and confirmed that it, indeed, was a hot hive. We spent 2 1/2 hours working with the hives. Basically this is what we did:
-Removed swarm cells from A (Keith came out with 5 new virgin queens)
-Added queen to A from Keith's nuc. We didn't spot the queen, but
their was eggs. Just to be safe, we added a swarm cell. If there is no
queen than the swarm cell will emerge. If there is a queen she will
destroy the swarm cell.
-Scraped off excessive drone cells and checked them for mites (only found one)-Added supers to all of the hives so each hive now has 2 supers
-Combined one deep of bees from hive A with C (newspaper chew)
-Moved hive A into B's position and vice versa. This ended up not being necessary because B also had a strong population, but the thought was that the forgers of A would fly back into B (taking bees out of the overpopulated A and into B)
So now the hives stand thusly:
A (former B): 2 deeps, 2 supers
B (former A, "hot hive"): 2 deeps, 2 supers
C (nuc split): 2 deeps, 2 supers, 1 of the deeps filled with hot hive's bees
Swarm: still in it's nuc box waiting to be dealt with
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