For a Master Beekeeper, I seem to be not the right one to say anything. I haven’t looked at my bees since last November.  But just looking out the back door, it seems that I only have one colony that is working. There should be two. I will be looking into my hives tomorrow afternoon. (Procrastination time was this Winter. I should have at least looked into the hives on a warm day in December and sometime in January.) Again, don’t do as I do, do as I say. hehe

I am getting some nuc boxes ready so I can split sometime this spring. I will be using plastic foundation with wax coating. I have found that using nuc boxes for splits works best for me. when the bees get crowded, I just put another nuc box on for the second story. Then when that box get full, I can either split the two boxes and put another box on top of  the new splits, or — I can automatically split again. Or, I can take the 10 frames and put them in a full hive box and have a working full colony.

I was asked the other day to tell what the newspaper method of combining two colonies. Here is an explanation and other methods of combining.

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/FloridaBeekeepers/message/4758

If any of you readers have questions about this presentation, then by all means, ask. I will have another post in a day or two telling you about my adventures in hive diving.