I Finally Opened My Stingless Bee Hive...

I was a bit worried about my stingless bee hive at home.  Since the bees sealed of the main entrance of the hive after my failed eduction experiment, there seems to be less activity.  I am still not sure if the new entrance at the side of the box leads to the main colony inside.  I do not know if the bees managed to puncture a hole at the side of the box.  Maybe they found a crack or something.  I just have to look inside to see if the bees are ok.  Of course, that was not the only thing I have in mind. Since, at the moment, it will be difficult to conduct the eduction experiment with the hive's new entrance, I thought I should try normal splitting... in due time of course, when the colony is much stronger than it is right now. I don't think I would dare split the main hive and have two half-strength colonies.  So I made an extra super and put a plastic sheet separator.  Hopefully the bees will extend their brood chamber and their food store, to this third super and probably a fourth one also.  The separator sheet is used to lessen the damage to the main hive during splitting, well, at least that is the idea.

I saw the separator in a Youtube video.  I don't have the measurements so I just made something close to it.  Below is the link to the video.

Normal split of Trigona carbonaria colony in box with dry split separators

My bees seem to be a bit tame compared to the colony I have recovered from CVSU.  My bees did not gang up or swarm all over me when I opened the cover.  It is probably because they are less aggressive or, not as strong as the colony in CVSU.  In fact, I think I could have opened up the hive without a bee vail.

So I finally opened up the hive for the first time since I got it a few months ago.  The colony looks ok but again, not as strong as the colony in CVSU despite the fact that the brood chamber is almost up to the ceiling of the second super.  But they are alive!  And the hive is full of honey and pollen.  I took a small amount of honey pots so I can have the people at home have a taste. I also want to get some sample viewed under microscope so I can try to identify the bees source of forage here at home.    My concern about this experiment is that the main hole of the separator sheet does not align with the brood chamber which is located at one corner.  I also did not remove much propolis to fully expose the brood.  But let us observe for a while what will happen and then adjust accordingly.

You can see the topmost layer of the brood chamber at the
upper right corner of the box hive where the main entrance
is now located.

I was able to make a short video of the whole process, but it will take a while for me to upload it to Youtube.  So, I will have to post the video later.