Wanted to give an update to this post. The swarm I posted about here^^^ has done remarkebly well, in fact approx 3 weeks ago this nice young couple invited my wife and I over for supper and we started off the meal with wonderful cheese and honey from this same hive harvested this past spring.
Yesterday, I went by and went through the hive with Albert, the guy pictured above.
They wintered in a deep and a medium. We took a quick peek about 3 weeks ago and I decided it was best he add another medium as the queen on this hive is just a beast and has been laying her fat little butt off.
So yesterday, discovered no swarm cells, lots of brood and very straight combs with absolutely no cross combing.
They've started building in the third box and we found the queen in the second and later again in the bottom deep, where there was picture perfect brood frames.
I set him up with a second hive from a cut out last yr as well but they are very mean and have lots of cross comb. I took 4 stings to the hands on that hive none on the other hive and decided against going much further with the inspection on the mean hive.
Next trip I go back I'm going to set up a nuc to make a queen from the good hive and once I get queen cells, I'll introduce a frame to the mean hive after I 86 that rotten girl.
Another good reason to have more than one hive.
Oh, and Albert's girl works at a cheese factory so he trades me cheese for helping him work his bees!
...JP