How did I put it on?
Yep, I made a little adapter out of some kind of trim wood. The guy at the lumberyard cut it into managable lengths for me so I could get it home, then I just sort of arranged them to fit snuggly against the boxes. I made 2 so I have one on the bottom and then one on the top to accomodate the inner cover, vent, outer cover. No problem.
Nope, no excluder.
Yep, I switched out frames, moved the open brood to the new "second" hive, gave them a couple of frames of honey, mostly capped brood though, all in one box, put the RR super on top, closed them up. The 'new' hive got 2 brood boxes (the top was empty of course), mostly uncapped brood and some honey.
I really wasn't able to take any honey for myself last year (my first year), I finally put a honey super up on the hives in Aug. just to let them try to draw some frames - it had taken them all of June and July to draw out 2 deeps for themselves. So even this year, I don't have fully drawn regular honey supers. I'm half wondering if their reluctence to draw the honey frames were due to the fact that they were drone foundations (you're aware that's what David sends with his supers). Anyway, the 'new' hive doesn't have a super on at this time, depending on what's happening with the apple blossoms, I may put one of the DE supers on this weekend (I'm heading up there as soon as I get off-line here) and let them work on that foundation.
Here's a "newbie" question....
If the bees seem to prefer using a top entrance, why don't we as keepers give them what they want? In other words, why not have a 2" or 3" upper entrance, rather than the little 2 bee space they get?
Is that what's accomplished with the Irimi (sp?) shims? I've read not to use those with comb frames, but I don't remember why.
OK, gotta run, I've got a 6 hour drive ahead of me - my queen is sitting patiently in the car.
I'll let you all know how the RR is doing when I get back!