With a window in the weather just warm enough to manipulate the hive, I decided that I would remove the bottom box (out of three) and swap the middle and top boxes in the traditional manner to convince the bees that they have plenty of room and thus don't need to swarm. So I suited up (been a while since I had to do that!) and got to it. Well, before I could do that I actually had to play the old game of finding fuel. I though that there would be coffee bean bags at my parents since I left some there... but they were AWOL. I thought I had a bag in my car.. nope... So I used straw to fuel the smoker. After that diversion I got to work on the hive. I took off the feeder that I had put on top... about one third drained... not as much as I would have hoped for, but oh well. Then I started shifting the boxes around. The bottom box was almost completely empty of bees, though I did fince a few square inches of capped honey that they had missed. I placed it next to the hive on a stand in hopes that the bees could rob it out. The top two boxes had been put to one side and I tried to put them back together. The bees were getting anxious and the boxes were surprisingly heavy, at this time I decided to puff some smoke which I had been avoiding since I didn't want to disturb the hive too much in the cold weather. And, you guessed it, the smoker was out.
I hate straw.
But I managed to get the boxes back together and vacate the yard with only a moderate amount of headbutting bees.
Afterwards I walked around and took pictures of the crocuses that were in bloom. Several of them had busy bees in them, this might explain the orange pollen I saw some of the bees returning with. I had also spotted dark brown material being brought back and I think I found the answer for that after spotting several bees busy on the coffee grounds on my parent's compost pile. *Insert Bees Getting a Buzz joke here*
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