The cut out went amazingly well today (for those of you following my rants).
The colony itself seems extremely weak, but it was a fantastic experience. Took my time, had my gear together, a helper along, and two years of digesting forums and books.
Man, I was nervous as hell.
Sort of glad it turned out to be small.
So, I'll have more pics, but here are the highlights...
Not nearly as large as I had hoped. Lots of honey, probably about 80 lbs of it. A chunk of bee bread but the only brood ran along the top and almost all of it was damaged removing it. I got another container of about 18 gal volume worth of empty comb.
And yes, I nabbed the queen. Got her in a cage and placed her with some house bees in a box to await all the field bees I vacuumed up as they returned.
I put them in with 3 frames of honey and some capped pollen and a hive top feeder and some 1:1 syrup I mixed up a couple days ago.
The bee vac worked great and I think I lost, maybe 5 to 10% of what I sucked up. Not too sure if it was the bee vac, the tube, or hitting the plastic wall of the container.
I will not be surprised if I lose this colony. I do have the queen but I was worried about the comb. Some of it looked odd and decided to place them on foundation with three honey frames.
Not too sure if that was a good call or not. I wanted clean comb just incase they had been sprayed and do manage to make it.