With a very mild Winter, the bees seem to have been pretty active all through the colder months and so, with the start of Spring, it was a good time to open the hives and check out the contents. To my delight, all of the hives at home were full and ready to get started. When you see hives that are full you need to do one of a couple of things - either add a box (usually if you have single box hive), take out some honey (from a bigger hive or out of a super), or split the hive to start a new hive. Since my hives are all double hives and set up for creating new hives, this is what I went with. So my three double hives were split to make three new hives.
I also checked the weaker hive that I have been feeding over Winter. This was late swarm capture from earlier in the year and I wasn't sure how they were going to fare over the colder months. However the box was full, with burr comb in the lid and plenty of brood and stored honey, making this my first hive available for sale this season.
On top of these hives, I also have another hive stored off site, which I checked in the afternoon. It's a double box hive and was also full with burr comb in the lid and some bees desperate for some more space, so another split was required.
So all in all, I ended up with one hive ready to sell and four splits to build up for sale later in the season. A busy but productive weekend : )
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