Jon

I found a few open queen cells in two colonies today and did an artificial swarm in each case, leaving the queen with the flyers on the original site and moving the brood away.
I am very surprised it has taken them until 23rd June.
They were not even my strongest colonies, which are all on double brood, and I am going to take a long cold look at the advantages and disadvantages of this irrespective of the doctrine that AMM are happy enough in a single brood box. I have three colonies which are happily maintaining 16-18 frames of brood and one of them is 85% AMM according to DrawWing.

It is a good time to split colonies as I need a stack of brood and bees for making up 3 frame mating nucs for queen cells I have hatching next week. I have another colony whose queen disappeared which I can use for making nucs as well.
I might have to make a few more correx nucs from electoral propaganda.
I am sick of looking at Jim Nicholson MEP, although I do get to decapitate him on a regular basis.