reverse Doolittle double split

Beekeeping as an endurance event!

I'm not sure of the exact numbers, as today is quite a blur, but I think we made near 300 splits today.  Unfortunately, I didn't eat much breakfast, and was really fading by the time we finished the splits today.  We hit the first yard early, and that made the bees mad, so they stung us like crazy through our suits and gloves.  Then it was hot by the time we got to the second yard, so they stung us like crazy though our suits and gloves...One got inside with me, and I am getting a good shiner (I hope), plus my hands and shoulders are red.  I'm pretty immune to bee venom, so you can guess how intense it was.  This is the first time ever that I had just had enough already!  Here's a good tip...bee stingers can get right through leather gloves once they get wet with honey.  Then the stinger stays in there, irritating your skin like a bunch of, well, stingers.  I coated my hands with honey and sat around for a while this evening.  It helped a lot!  
   Also today, after lunch, we split up into two teams and went to introduce the first 301 queen cells into our splits!  That is the full circle, and was one of the nicest things we have done.  Very peaceful.  A couple of things to watch for when introducing cells....if you aren't completely sure that there is no queen, and the best beekeeper misses them sometimes, especially if there happen to be two in a colony, then you should use a protector around the cell to keep the old queen from opening it up early and killing your baby.  Also, you want to put your queen cell near other capped brood, but not blocking any other girls from emerging.  make sure the end of the protector is not  against the comb, so she can get out, and if your hive has feeding holes in the cover, don't put your queen cell right under the hole.  The new queen has an 85% chance of winning the battle, if the old queen is still present, a little comfort.  
   We have caught several swarms in the past few days, tons of fun for every beekeeper, no matter how many hives they have, of how tired they might be.  Tomorrow morning, we have to go get rid of an africanized colony in a shed.  I am amazed at the variety of things I have been privileged to participate in with these neat guys.  I can't tell you how exciting it was to see Tomas drive in with a semi-load of nucs and bottoms and pallets on Monday.  We have used a lot of the load already!  I am pretty sure I need a forklift now.  Here's your commercial beekeeper lingo for today.  "We are going to sell our nucs tomorrow".  And I'm asking, "what, are we selling nucs already?"  They say, "no,  we are celling nucs tomorrow", meaning put queen cells in splits.  Still working on keeping up.  Tomorrow, I'll share cool methods of directing bees with hand signals, and sound signals to go in a hive!  Too cool, just like in the movie Mercury Rising.  T