Should have been nuc ed down
I don't have any nucs, so that wasn't an option, but I probably should have put them into only 1 box instead of 2. I didn't because when I winterized them they still had some brood, but in my area bees need a full medium of honey to get through the winter, and I didn't want to take their brood from them, so I couldn't fit all the honey they would need into one box. Perhaps that was a mistake.
I feel for you guys over there, hats off for your endurance.
I do have a question though...
Why are there so many drones?
Or is it my eyes?
It must be your eyes. 
They are all workers in the pictures.
Member, I know you did the best you could do with what you had. It is easy to look back and tell ourselves what we should have done or tell others what they should have done, perhaps it would have sounded better or a little nicer if Mikey would have said (what you could have done). Mikey is a nice guy and I am sure this is what he absoultly meant. (What you could have done) I feel sure he did not mean to come across in a possibly offensive way. Is this right Mikie?
"What do you guys think I should have done in this regard?"
What you should've done was best that you could do, under the circumstances, and you that is just what you did. What you could have done, and I think you did do, was a good treatment of some type such as OAV or Apaivar etc. just before putting them to bed. (See Ian Stepler on this), and as Mikey said came up with a nuc box if you would have had access to onen (which you did not have). The biggest thing would have been to dispose of the mites. Feed pollen for late fall and winter growth.
That way instead of going backwards, your hive would have been going forward even if a turtle pace considering the time of year. If we take a closer look at the next to the last picture, blown up as much as possible, we will see young larvae in the open cells on the right side just under the honey. So we know the queen was trying Member, I hope that helps?
Phillip
