New queen cells

It's that time of year where the strong hives make a new queen and the old queen leaves the hive with about 1/2 the work force to find a new home.  Swarming is natural and a good sign that you came out of winter strong.  So why try to keep them from swarming?  Losing half your work force right at nectar flow is unfortunate.  Not the end of the world, but a bummer none the less.

That cup is built in that position and in a 1/2 peanut shape in-case the colony decides to make a queen.  The cell was empty.

Several queens are raised at once when swarming is impending.  If you scrape all the queen cells off thinking you are going to stop the swarm, if the old queen has already flown off,  you could have no queens at all now.

If you look carefully in the cell you can see her future highness floating in royal jelly and being attended by the nurse bees.  The cell will be capped in about 3 more days and she will emerge about 8 days later.   

What to do when the hive is to tall?

CSX and Demeter both came out of winter in full force.  They both have 2 deeps and 2 mediums full.  Nectar is coming in like crazy, but I don't want to add more boxes since I can hardly see over the top already.  This has left me no choice but to pull frame by frame fully capped honey and replace the frames with an empty frame.  I wish I had wired the frames so I could use the extractor and feed drawn out comb back to them.