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This was the advice given by Lawrence on his livestream a couple of days ago. It’s a difficult one because I rate both him and you as having good advice 🤷‍♂️. Guess I’ll just have to experiment for myself! Maybe you should go on his channel as an interview guest?? I’ve heard him mention you in...

I’ve never done a demaree but all the advice I’ve seen says they should be working a couple of supers before it can be done successfully

They had no supers on at all until today….would it really work demareeing them?

I gave them a second bb three weeks ago. In retrospect perhaps I should have supered them instead so I could be doing a demaree now. Don’t think I want to do my first demaree on a double brood colony…plus they would have to be already working one or two supers before a demaree would be viable...

I’ll persevere with them for now. I recently had to nuc the queen from my strongest and friendliest hive. Once I’m confident the original hive has requeened successfully, I think I’ll squash my chalky queen and unite with the nuc.

I gave them a super to go at in the meantime. I’ll check again in 5 days I think. I didn’t shake bees off and have a thorough look so it’s entirely possible I missed another cup with an egg. Am I right in thinking that if there was another one and they did decide to use it then they can’t cap...

If you find an egg in a queen cup (I found two actually), do you treat it as swarm preparations or are they possibly just kidding? Rightly or wrongly I tore them both down.

Is chalk brood sometimes a bit of an early season problem? I noticed on my last inspection that whilst these colonies seem slow to build up, the chalk brood does seem to be less than it was (although it’s certainly still there). Both are black bee colonies

Got 3 of my 4 queens marked which is a relief as they’re getting harder and harder to spot now the hives are expanding. The fourth one eluded me despite being in the smallest colony! The hive I nuc’d the queen from on 1st is still very busy and filling their first super. Hope they’re not set...

So just leave ‘em for 3 weeks now, right?

Update: I went into the nuc today and found and marked the queen. There were some eggs so I think all is well there 🤞. In the original hive there were loads of emergency cells which I took down, just leaving the one that I originally chose when I did the split. There was still quite a lot of...

I’ve had this happen before. It’s annoying if you want to put another bait hive in the same location. Best just to put a temp qx over the entrance to prevent absconding (removed after 48 hrs) and move a swarm the same day it arrives

out of curiosity then, for how many days after an egg was laid will the bees have the option of turning it into a queen?

I need to do this too. I was a bit unsure how long after nucing the queen the original hive will be able to make more cells…is day 5 the earliest you can do it and day 7 the latest (if the split was made on day 0)?

What do you mean by stickiest?

What criteria do you use when deciding whether to go double brood, as opposed to qx and first super?

I wonder if the main spell of swarming will be pushed back a bit this year. There seems to have been more talk of starving than swarming and I suppose even with a change in the weather, it might take a week or two for colonies that are light on stores right now to start thinking about swarming…...

Swarm traps all quiet today despite the good weather (yesterday there was half a dozen scouts at each) so hopeful it’s worked 🤞

I just expected that to happen today but I guess they left straight after the split yesterday…