I did it today the weather was clear, the sky blue the temp in the mid 50s and the bees were singing while they worked. I decided I couldn't find a better day to re-plat my bee yard. The 1st goal was to put each hive one the new hive stands that I've made over the past several weeks and have had sitting beside the hives for over a week. The 2nd objective was to take both of the over wintered nucs and trade them into 8 frame hives. The 3rd item was to set up the hive for my daughters package (on order) and a bait hive. #4 was to set up my double nuc double queen/booster hives. Last was checking brood, remaining stores, and feeding.
I got all but #4 done. I decided to turn the MH hive into the queen rearer/booster hive and so I took away the now empty of stores medium box and added a 2nd deep nuc box for them to draw out. Once that's done I'll pull the 2 deep nucs apart, set them side by side on the same stand and add a medium nuc to each. I had lots of fun going through each hive and putting them in their new spot--just a foot or 2--and having the air full of bees like I was inside a tornado, the bees were, of course, all a buzz over the deal and a few got so lost they ended up moving into the bait hive (I'll have to correct that tomorrow).
Each of the hives had at least 2 full frames of brood and 2 frames of stores remaining on the nucs, the bigger hives (Italian) had 4 frames of stores and 6 frames of brood. The MH had made a mess of everything, used all the stores in the lower medium and had both sides of 1 frame in the upper deep nuc of brood. One the other deep nuc is drawn out and full of bees the queen is getting the ax and I'm pulling frames from the Italian and Russians to develop my queens. The Russians 2 story medium nucs each over wintered better than the MH. The MH actually showed the least hygenic of the 4 hives. They had cluster down beyond the outer edges of the brood chamber and had left a lot of dead bees in the comb in a circle on the frames outside of the current brood area--they didn't seem to be in a hurry to clean up the mess. They also had the largest pile of dead bees on the SBB.
I took the SBB of the hives that had them and replaced them with screened slatted racks (SSR). All together things went well except for the MH. By the time I was finished I was exhausted and had what my family calls the stumbles, which means I've over extended my limited endurance. My Sister, who came for dinner, said she came by with a friend, headed for the lake, and got to show her friend her brother working his bees.
So it is set, the bee yard that is. I reconfigured the plat so that I can hold 12 hives within the space dedicated to the bee yard--that means I'll be able to sell 6 nucs next spring.