I went in today and T?ed the bees off. I got hit twice on the left hand.
First hive, the weaker/queenless.
I went in looking for all those queen cells. I Found that I am down to a couple good frames of capped brood. Plenty of bees though. Almost everything that was empty of brood has sugar water and pollen in it. The queen cells were gone I thought. Near the end I did find two queen cells that were capped. The rest were just the bases of the torn down cells.
My assessment was that they must have chosen these cells as the best, or they are just going around and tearing them all down. Otherwise they are overstuffing the brood chamber with sugar water.
I dumped the feeder out and leaned it against the hive.
Next hive, the stronger one.
They too were packing sugar water everywhere. There were frames full of capped and uncapped honey. Everything that was drawn had something in it. Lot of eggs, lots of brood, capped and uncapped. Anywhere else they could squeeze in some sugar water, they were stashing it away, even in the brood frames. I also found about four capped queen cells and a fair amount of drone cells capped.
My assessment was these fools are getting ready to skip town. Every cell has something in it.
I dumped the feeder, put the queen in a clip and pulled a full frame of each, capped and uncapped brood. I shook the bees off, and set them aside. I replaced those two frames with new foundation in the second position from each side. I release the queen, closed it up and leaned the feeder against the hive.
Back to the first hive. I pop it open again. I have to go back through it again to find my queen cups, and keep them safe. Then I find a couple frames of mostly sugar water. Shake them off and replace with the two brood frames, that I forgot to mention, also both had capped queen cells from the good hive.
What I think I did was by removing the feeders, is stop them from packing sugar water in the brood frames. I hope as they draw new comb, they move their stores to more appropriate places. Removing the queen cells from the good hive and adding in the foundation hopefully discourages a swarm and gives them some chores.
The brood boost in the weak hive should keep the LWs at bay until a new queen emerges. Who knows, she might come from good stock.