- Joined
- Sep 23, 2010
- Messages
- 4,727
- Reaction score
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- Location
- North London, West Essex and Surrey
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 70
If you check the BBs every 7 days then you will be on top of development, because in that period a colony won't go from a bursting population of bees but zero QCs to about 15 cells at the last inspection on Sunday of which a couple of them quite big and already capped!Home often do you check the brood box?
There lies a recipe for swarming. Better outcome would have been to hive the queen on her frame in a new box of foundation on the original site, and make up as many nucs as you wish with good QCs and the brood and bees.lots of very young larva and eggs and open brood and the best queen cell in the original colony. The bees in the original colony are still too many
Not if you take action today: open up and look for QCs, open or closed. Make up nucs with sealed QCs, brood, stores and bees, leave one good open QC and leave them alone for three weeks, after which check for eggs.Like previous years they will be off in a day or two.
If you find that a virgin has emerged, make up nucs and/or knock down the rest of the QCs. Populate the nucs with bees shaken in from the supers. Shake bees from all combs to make sure you haven't missed any QCs.
If Dani is correct and a virgin has emerged, you still have an opportunity to prevent a swarm but must go in now and establish colony status.