Postcard again, just to keep this alive... 

Today I'm heading off to the bees, to do a bit of gardening, just trimming back the weeds from the hive entrances. Yesterday we had a Plan that quickly fell apart because the bees had other ideas. We were moving the two surviving hives to our other site. We had a loan of the tractor and trailer, and P had been the night before to tape up the entrances. Several hundred foragers apparently said "WTF?!" and forced their way out, only to be unable to get back in. Siiiigh. 

So we decided to let them stay until the winter and went ahead with an inspection. Which revealed that a very weak colony that had been merged with a stronger one, had somehow acquired a strong queen. So we had two colonies, each with a queen - separated by a queen excluder - thriving under one roof. Another heavy sigh. We set up another hive next door, after fetching a roof from the distant shed - because of course we had previously removed all extraneous equipment from the site. Siiiiigh.

So instead of having just one site with all our hives on it, we still have two sites, and an extra hive. 

Bloody bees.