Just one click away from the most adventurous beekeeping conference of the year.We hope so. Something for everyone.
Programme and booking at: http://goo.gl/uCBLf8
BIBBA's conference sub-committee are really putting the boat out on this one. Why not enjoy a few days in North Wales this...
6/7 frames of brood? Well that would explain why they didn't need the super. Add another when the first super is over half full of BEES (first one when there are 7 or 8 frames of BROOD). Under or over...under prevents trampling the first more than needed.
The chances of supersedure with a less than strong queen is not small. Somewhere in the paperwork it says that MAQS exposes weakness in the queen. Hmm....sounds like a bit of a get-out clause to me. Also there has been a bit of an admission that here in the UK last year colonies were guinea pigs...
You say 4 hives. What was the brooding situation in the other two? And did you look hard at the "infill" for tiny islands of polished brood cells which would have shown a queen in there somewhere? Were they acting queenless or did you possibly miss an unmarked supersedure queen?
Meanwhile here in East mid Wales...bees are bursting out of Commercials with only one super and first charged cups appearing. Four apiaries on 3 or 4 supers and will be taking Demaree and queen breeding kit out from tomorrow. This. Won't. Last.
Firstly, it is always going to be better to move the queen out and raise cells in the full colony.
Second, there is an entrenched attitude that mininucs are somehow advanced and not for "beginners"...this is simply not so (and neither is grafting by the way). There are several excellent queen...
Quite rare I should say and of course no standard size. A healthy swarm or package is really best for populating a tbh (we used to have six but don't use them any more).
Yes. You shouldn't write knowledge from some random person's copy-paste ;), but as you don't want a queen with dodgy genes it was for scientific interest only (and with a sample size of one the term scientific is a loose one). I don't keep queens whose colonies aren't reliable enough to show...