Recent content by Swift Nick

You need to feed them before winter, not during. I aim for early September before the Ivy, although the Ivy looks early this year.

I united two 6 frame nucs, one on top of the other in a brood box each, left them for 4 days in a flow. I had some wild comb hanging off the queen excluder, but I removed it in seconds and put it in my wax box. You should be just fine.

Thanks, the other cell was only just capped. I made myself a little extra work, with a couple of extra inspections. But I thought I had done the right thing, preserved a virgin queen, saved a week of queenlessnes for the colony and reduced the risk of a queen cell no emerging. It’s not always...

Thanks, not the best thing to have done then, back in on Tuesday then, looking for looking for queen cells.

I inspected one of my hives this morning, it had about 8 or so queen cells, two capped. My marked queen, who I put in the hive 2 weeks ago after getting mated in an Apidea, was still in the hive and there were frames with eggs. I put the queen in a nuc with three frames and a few frames shook...

Thanks, that would work, they are close.

Great idea, one for the notebook for next year.

Thank you, the Apidea’s are spread out, so I will just shake them out, I presume the fliers will find a hive to go to.

I have 5 Apidea’s which I have now transferred the mated queens from. I don’t need to raise any more queens right now. What is the best way of getting the bees in the Apedia into a hive? Shake them out in front of hives? Thanks.

I have 2 nucs that I intend to unite into one full hive. Currently they are starting to run out of room, plenty of brood and plenty of nectar coming in. One nuc has just produced a charged queen cell, it has a 2021 queen that I want to get rid of prior to uniting. The other nuc has a new queen...

Thanks! Well it’s a nice day & week for it, I have 8 queens from my first go at grafting due to mate this week, so I am pretty excited too :)

Just a recap from my original thread; Bees attempted to swarm & went back to hive on 10 June, so I took out all queen cells and did a queen to nuc. On 17 June, I took out the emergency cells & introduced a virgin queen that had emerged from the incubator the previous day. Today 20 June, the bees...

I would take another look in 2 or 3 days if you can, and see if they are developing the cups. It is a bit disruptive taking the queen out if they aren’t preparing to swarm. If the do make swarm preparations, then queen to nuc is a good shout, it has worked well for me this year.

Thank you for your explanation and the link, it is an interesting observation, I have four similar hives two Q+ & two Q-, so I will see how the get on with the blackberry. But even if the observation was scientifically proven, I wouldn’t follow it, it would just be another stressor for the bees.

I am interested Dani why you wouldn’t want to nuc a queen on the cusp of a flow, there would be plenty of brood to follow on, the brood gap would come later. I know you know your bees, so I am probably missing something. Does nuc’ing the queen effect their foraging? I ask because I have just...