Well, I got into it alright... ended up getting a late start in the morning after having built the new bee-vac the night before didn't allow me any time to pack the car. So my 4 hour time-frame shrank to a 2 hour 20 minute timeframe... none the less, I told them I would get into them so I did. It started out well enough, but I quickly found that it was just not going to happen the way I wanted it to. They were up under the soffit, but only with honey storage... the brood chamber is down inside the wall in an inaccessible area. Nevertheless, the young queen must have been out for a stroll checking out the hive because I did see and nab her, allong with 3-4 thousand bees... but it was drone city. There was nearly one drone for each worker... holy cow that was a lot of drones. Anyway, I took that and added 1 frame of brood and eggs (just in case the queen got mortally wounded in the process of me nabbing her, though I doubt she was hurt at all)... and 3 frames of drawn comb, uncapped nectar and pollen all about half-covered with bees from my main hive. So that should get them off to a good start. But I left more bees than I took and since the brood chamber is inaccessible I suggested a trap-out to the homeowner and that's what I think they'll do. So I did what I could and was done with 10 minutes to spare...
Didn't get stung at all, didn't even have a single bee attempt to sting me... not even when I was cutting out the comb. It was downright odd to see bees that calm. None of my bees have ever been that calm, not even when they were just swarms. They almost seemed eager to leave as many hundreds actually marched right in to the bee-vac on their own.
Strange thing though... when I pulled in, I found several bees crawling around on the driveway. They were pitch black with no white/gray bands but were definately honey bees, so I assume they were german black bees... so I was thinking... oh great! Here we go, quick and dirty cutout with german black bees = at least 50 stings through the suit... but when I got up to the bees in the hive, none of them were black. Not even carni colored. They were all brown, with no gold or orange in them at all, just brown... and so dossile it really still just amazes me how dossile they were.
I am really pleased with how well my new bee-vac worked... I really got the suction just right and the landing pad angled just right... not a single bee was dead when I opened them up and none even looked banged up at all. So that was pretty awesome.
So after all that I picked up my son from school and then got into my big hive... man, the temperament difference was just huge. They were just pissy today. As soon as I cracked the hive open they were all over me letting me know about it. But I had to go digging through there to finally get rid of that deep box... finally gone. Now I'm down to all mediums... though I still have 5 deep frames in there... they just hang down into the second medium and while I'm sure the bees will not just build comb below them instead of the mediums, I would much rather they do that because I'm not overly concened about having to move those deep frames... when I do, it will be in the summer dearth when there is no brood in them and it will be to replace them with medium frames and get rid of the deep frames entirely.
And now I'm at work, getting ready for a full, long night of working half-asleep. Good times!
I forgot my camera, else I would have taken some pictures... but at least that's all I forgot... plus, that camera prolly wouldn't have saved the pictures anyway, half the time it does and half the time it doesn't.