Well the cutout is complete. I am still recovering from this experience as it was an extremely exhausting day for me. We started at 11:30 and got done around 3:00. There were 6 people there total and at first I thought it would be way to many people, but actually it was a good thing because we all had jobs to do.
I learned how to place the rubberbands into the frames, I learned how to cut the combs very carefully with a knife to cause the least amount of injury to the bees. This beekeeper was supposed to bring a beevac, but did not and it made things much harder. After he would cut out the comb and hand it to us, we would place the combs into a designated box. If it had honey in it, then into the honey box. If it was empty comb, then into another box.
One thing he did that I did not agree with, he had me rubberbanding some of the honey combs into the frames and this was hard, sticky work. The combs were so hard to get into the frames. He wanted lots of the honey placed in the supers. I thought this was ridiculous.
The other problem was there was no brood whatsoever and he thought this hive might be queenless. This hive swarmed about 2 weeks ago (Ray got this swarm with me)and there was evidence of many empty queen cells in the wall. But we never did see any brood or eggs anywhere in that wall. I was wondering if perhaps there might be a virgin queen or a queen on a mating flight????
So basically the super was filled with just honey and Keith the main beek, just dumped as many bees into the super as he could and cleaned out all the wax from the wall. That is how we left the place. There were so many bees just flying around and laying all over the ground. I felt so bad for them. When we left I felt like something had been left undone. You know a nagging feeling.
Seemed like we should have waited until evening to get most of the foragers.
I don't know much about cutouts, but this just felt unfinished to me. Perhaps if we had the beevac, then we just would have gotten all the bees into it. It would have made things easier to work and not so many bees being killed.I did learn a lot and now I know what to do. How to rubberband the frames, how to cut the wax out gently. But also without knowing if there was a queen and there did not seem to be a queen, this left things feeling unfinished also.
I will be posting photos later on when I get them developed. I took a cheap disposable camera and have to get the photos onto a CD. Also one other guy took lots of photos and promised to send them to me also.
I am glad I went, but not sure if this is my cup of tea. Perhaps in an emergency I would know what to do now,but very hard work.