>>no, there were some wildflowers, and a bunch of very small desert flowers, but the first main flow (prickly pair, achateia(sp)) had not yet hit.

Then, I'd say your hives are at an excellent build-up point.  My strongest hives are in 3 deeps and starting to deposit nectar in the first medium (end of April, south-eastern NY state).

It always amazes me how fast bees build up at the start of the season.  Pickep an approx. 6-lb swarm the other day.  An unmarked queen and extremely (100%) colored bees...  I am not used to such uniformity even from queen producers.  

>>Dee leaves everything in the 3 bottom boxes (deeps) for the bees...and some hives had brood in 4+ boxes _before_ the flow.

What are the coldest temps in the winter in Arizona?

>>a couple of other observations about the aggressiveness of the bees in these videos.

I am not used to such rough handling of bees but suppose this is how commercial beekeepers go through hives.  There must have been quite a few squashed bees from the movements I saw in the videos.  I hardly kill a bee when going through hives.  And my bees, a little unlike the video, do boil over with bees.  If I did not smoke them into the boxes, I'd bee killing scores each time replacing a box.

If you say you reeked of alarm odor, how come you were not getting stung?  You'd expected a few stings under such conditions even from European bees. 

I was also very suprised how easily the boxes separated.  My bees strive for continuous comb and I have to push down on the lower frames before lifting off a box.

I was also surprised how seemingly effortlessly Dee was lifting off those deeps!  A strong person indeed.  Even a brood-filled deep is somewhat heavy.

>>...bees simply do not like the video camera.

There also seemed to be quite a few bees at the black netting of your bee suits.

>>we went through about 500 hives in 7 working days, and made up about 100 splits.  

Wow!  There was a mention a couple of times that you did not want to use smoke to drive nurse bees off the brood.  Why?  Were you concerned there would be insufficient nurses for the splits?

Waldemar

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