MrPea
New Bee
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2012
- Messages
- 76
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Saffron Walden
- Hive Type
- WBC
- Number of Hives
- 2
Hiya
This is my first post on here, been reading for ages but thought it's about time I wrote somethnig!
So I had quite a large coloney a couple of months ago that decided to get quite swarmy (they started as a 4 frame nuc mid-April). They're not the friendliest of bees, last years were much friendlier but they didn't make it over the winter so I had to start again. With the help of a local expert, we did an artificial swarm so I now have 2 hives. The new queen appears to be going at a rate of knots - very very neat laying pattern, food over the top, lots of capped brood. Has used about 8/10 frames so far but building up fairly well. She is also very calm, the bees don't really bother with me at all - which is odd considering where she came from!
The old queen, moved on to empty foundation, is still pretty feisty...2 supers full of honey on top which I will have to remove soon to get them ready for the winter - but nooo food whatsoever in the brood box. Her laying pattern is erratic at best, there is brood everywhere! I mean, there's a lot of it, but compared to the new queen, she's mental! (oh, she's marked white btw). They've drawn out all of the frames but only using 7/10 of them...if they actually started storing some food in the bottom, then they'd probably actually use the empty ones.
Now, I've had words, sent letters and emails, but they won't store anything in the brood box, they're just packing it in the supers. Which I can't complain about, it's very kind, but they need to prepare, crazies!
Is the old queen coming to the end of her reign? I assume they're going to sort her out if she is and I'll just leave them to it.
And is taking the supers off the right thing to do? Should I take them off and just feed like mad to try and give them something back?
Well, there's a little snippet of my life - be an interesting discussion anyhow.
P
This is my first post on here, been reading for ages but thought it's about time I wrote somethnig!
So I had quite a large coloney a couple of months ago that decided to get quite swarmy (they started as a 4 frame nuc mid-April). They're not the friendliest of bees, last years were much friendlier but they didn't make it over the winter so I had to start again. With the help of a local expert, we did an artificial swarm so I now have 2 hives. The new queen appears to be going at a rate of knots - very very neat laying pattern, food over the top, lots of capped brood. Has used about 8/10 frames so far but building up fairly well. She is also very calm, the bees don't really bother with me at all - which is odd considering where she came from!
The old queen, moved on to empty foundation, is still pretty feisty...2 supers full of honey on top which I will have to remove soon to get them ready for the winter - but nooo food whatsoever in the brood box. Her laying pattern is erratic at best, there is brood everywhere! I mean, there's a lot of it, but compared to the new queen, she's mental! (oh, she's marked white btw). They've drawn out all of the frames but only using 7/10 of them...if they actually started storing some food in the bottom, then they'd probably actually use the empty ones.
Now, I've had words, sent letters and emails, but they won't store anything in the brood box, they're just packing it in the supers. Which I can't complain about, it's very kind, but they need to prepare, crazies!
Is the old queen coming to the end of her reign? I assume they're going to sort her out if she is and I'll just leave them to it.
And is taking the supers off the right thing to do? Should I take them off and just feed like mad to try and give them something back?
Well, there's a little snippet of my life - be an interesting discussion anyhow.
P
