The weather's still not great for opening the hive today - it's chilly and gusty with huge threatening rainclouds in the distance! I don't think there's a chance that this colony would actually swarm today, but unfortunately we won't have time to do this operation later when the weather's due to improve - and then the queen is guaranteed to swarm!
There are a number of various methods for dividing colonies and this will be slightly different to the divide we carried out last week. I've researched many options and I think this method will give us the best chance of helping these bees back to full health again!
The first step, just like last time, is to find the queen.We became concerned right from the start because, not only was one of the queen cells from Saturday now sealed (meaning that, if the weather had been better, the queen would have already swarmed), but also there was not a single egg in the colony fresher than 48 hours old! The signs were that the queen had already swarmed away and, if there hadn't been such a large number of bees still here, we would have assumed she actually had.
Anyway, we persevered in searching (I'm ashamed to say I became more and more snappy as the black rainclouds approached!) and it took us absolutely ages this time - we had to go though every single frame 4 times. It is possible (though it takes much longer) to do this divide without finding the queen and, on the very last frame of the very last search we intended to do, my wife spotted her - when I'd already given up looking!
It's not surprising we found it so incredibly hard to find Bea this time - she's actually shrunk, as is clearly visible in the photo above - she's now only slightly larger than the worker bees!This is because her attendants do not feed her at all in preparation for the swarm (unlike all the other bees, she is actually unable to feed herself, because she only eats royal jelly produced by glands on the nurse-bees' heads). Starving her for a few days like this means that her vast ovaries (which take up the majority of her abdomen) temporarily shrink - she cannot lay eggs, but is now light enough to fly again - the first time she has done so since her mating flight, soon after hatching.
While my wife held the frame with the queen on (just like last time, it contained brood in all stages and no queen cells), I moved the two nucleus hives into position, one on each side.
I filled this first one to the right first (N2) with 5 frames containing a good range of brood, stores and queen cells.
Then filled the other one to the left (N1) with another 5 similarly-full frames - this nuc also contained the frame with that one sealed queen cell. 
With the queen frame still held safely over the brood box (just in case the queen fell off), I refilled the original hive (now the 'swarm' colony) with new empty foundation frames along with one frame of fully-drawn foundation - this is so that the queen can continue laying as soon as she is in, reducing the risk of her absconding.
She was carefully replaced (we checked that she was still there) and everything was closed up again. We just had time to gather all our tools and walk 5 yards away before the cloudburst came and sent us racing for the house, still with a few soggy bees clinging bravely to our suits!
This is quite a sizeable apiary now - 5 colonies! Three of them are still queenless of course but with a bit of luck I am hoping that we will be able to begin the summer with at least three healthy colonies.We are going to carry out quite a bit of precise frame-manipulation in the next few weeks now. Because every single one of these colonies will each have it's own period without any sealed brood at all (or hardly any), it's a great opprotunity to use 'bait combs' to lure every dratted varroa mite to their doom. It's an entirely chemical-free treatment but it does take quite a bit of planning and careful timing...
