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Hello again. I joined a queenless drone laying colony with a smaller Queen right one 12 days ago. All seemed well when I watched them from the outside discard bits of newspaper through the front entrance. Yesterday I did the first inspection dove joining them. I found no signs of fresh brood in...

Only below the honey super

Should I avoid the sports section when choosing the newspaper? Not sure because they are mostly girls on the bottom and boys above? 🤷🏻

Thanks for the quick response. What should I have done differently?

I tried this method today taking a queenless hive that has had laying worker brood for weeks now. The problem I have had is that I have a dadant hive which has a screwed in bottom board so I used 2 brand new supers which together can fit brood size frames. After placing the newspaper I proceeded...

I thought I had the same...then I found out I had laying workers 😞

So today I did my inspection after 7 days to see the capped brood. I attach pictures but it seems like 100% drone unfortunately... Lots of big fat larvae too that don't even fit in the cells. No sign of a queen laying out otherwise. Any suggestions? I can't even treat for varroa.. Thanks 😞

Thanks for this response. Your optimism keeps me going 😂! I'm in the north of Italy and the weather here was shockingly bad. The wettest and coldest May in the last 40 years. An expert beekeeper neighbour of mine commented that he's never seem anything like it so yes could be... To me it...

My thoughts exactly! So should I give it a few days and check once it's capped or leave it be?

Thanks for the quick reply. I really hope so... I know that once capped it will be easy to tell if it's drone but this colony has been on the edge for weeks now and I really hope they recover. It just seems like a massive amount of brood on a lot of frames to be just drone...

Hi everyone... So long story short...I have a colony which swarmed on May 11th. On May 12th I noticed a few queen cells and on may 13th a virgin queen. Since then however, zero signs of brood so 7 days ago I introduced a test frame from another colony. Today I took a look and to my surprise...

Hello everyone. Firstly thanks once again for all your input. Your experience is precious to me! So just an update. After releasing the Queen I checked back on the eggs in the Nicot frame and had found that all the eggs had either been moved out and/or destroyed. Result: competely cleaned out...

The Queen right colony has eggs larvae and brood on about 6 frames, the queenless one has only adult bees. It's had no brood for weeks now

Sorry for the poor question... The queenless colony does not have a big enough population of nurse bees to create a queen cell so my question is do i take resources from the Queen right colony or do I shake nurse bees into the queenless colony? Hope my question makes sense Thanks

Sorry guys (and girls?). I need to raise a new queen for an ageing colony and clearly don't have sufficient nurse bees. To crest the Queen cells is it best to put some larvae in the queenless colony together with worker bees taken from the Queen right one or is it best to split the Queen right...

So the Queen has now filled the Nicot with eggs. Only a couple of cells in the bottom corner got 2/3 eggs each when she was starting off, all the others got only 1. Do i leave the Nicot queen excluder on Eden I release her or take it off?

Thanks for the feedback. Yes I'm sure. I only have one Queen and not enough brood on the Queen right colony to be able to use it.

Yes of course. I really appreciate all and any input. The colony which I suspect is queenless is actual quite strong I think. Despite the lack of brood it is still on 9 frames with plenty of pollen, honey etc. That particular colony are Ligustica, the other smaller one is Buckfast.

That not "today" 😊

Ok thanks. Yes I have people here today can guide