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I worked through all my hives the other day. I had to remove the dry sugar setups from winter, pull the mite treatment strips I had on all winter and swap the top and bottom boxes. I did see some of my queens during the inspection and marked hives for strength and checked the volume of the brood to know if the queens were good. I had one hive that wasn't as strong as I would like and another that was mean. I'm going to smash both of those queens and replace them when my shipment of Cordovan queens arrives(or 3 days before).
Why do you flip/swap the boxes? The bottom box typically had brood and honey going into winter. They've eaten the honey and the bees have moved into the top box. That's where the majority of the eggs are being laid and resources are available in the spring. I clean the wax casings and debris from the bottom board and put the top box on the bottom, assuming that's where the queen and eggs are located. I put the bottom box on the top, because the empty cells are inviting to the queen to get busy laying and building up the hive, and their instinct is to work "up".
Things are blooming and the bees are busy. I've been feeding pollen substitute trying to get them built up quicker. I assume around the end of the month I'll make some splits, and will use the new queens i have coming on as many as I can.
Over the winter and spring, I told myself I wasn't going to do cutouts this year...too much work, too much risk of bringing in disease or mites. I made it all the way to April 11 before I caved and agreed to do a hive removal from a well pump house. I need the bees and I can get these from the ground. Other than snakes and electric wires near water, and bees, what could go wrong? It'll make good content to share here and other places I guess.
I'll try to get some videos of swarm captures and the cutout stuff to share soon.
Also, for my spring mite treatments, I purchased and am going to be trying Formic Pro for the first time. It's pretty nasty stuff and will kill the grass in front of the hives, but it will nuke those mite bastards.
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