Hi,
I hope you are all doing well and keeping healthy given the current situation.
We have 2 backyard hives here in London.
1 of our hives swarmed yesterday, we retrieved the swarm. We have no spare brood box, so it’s in a closed nuc.
We physically only have room for 2 hives in our garden.
We suspect the hive swarmed because the brood box was too full, as when we inspected a week ago all frames were full of eggs, larvae and brood. There were 2 queen cups in which we couldn't see eggs, so we thought all would be well if we added a super, which we did.
So, my questions which I'm hoping you might be able to help me with please:
1. Should we have removed some of the brood frames at the time of our initial inspection, to allow the queen more space to lay?
2. We plan to unite the swarm with the old hive using the newspaper method, but we only have 2 brood boxes which are both in use. We could use a super and eke, which would then fit brood frames, then after we’ve united the swarm and old hive, swapping the super and eke back for the brood box on top of it. I wondered if there might be a better approach here as this seems as if it could be stressful for the girls?
3. We also need a new queen for our other hive (the one which didn’t swarm), as the current one is getting old. We’d considered that instead of employing option 2. we could remove the old queen from the hive which didn’t swarm, uniting the swarmed colony and it’s queen with it. This would potentially leave the hive which swarmed weaker, but I wondered whether any of you had any views as to whether this might be preferable.
I also had a trip to the emergency room after moving the swarm due to an anaphylactic shock reaction. Unfortunately this means that my partner will have to deal with bees, hence I want to be as clear as possible about we do. Thank you.
I hope you are all doing well and keeping healthy given the current situation.
We have 2 backyard hives here in London.
1 of our hives swarmed yesterday, we retrieved the swarm. We have no spare brood box, so it’s in a closed nuc.
We physically only have room for 2 hives in our garden.
We suspect the hive swarmed because the brood box was too full, as when we inspected a week ago all frames were full of eggs, larvae and brood. There were 2 queen cups in which we couldn't see eggs, so we thought all would be well if we added a super, which we did.
So, my questions which I'm hoping you might be able to help me with please:
1. Should we have removed some of the brood frames at the time of our initial inspection, to allow the queen more space to lay?
2. We plan to unite the swarm with the old hive using the newspaper method, but we only have 2 brood boxes which are both in use. We could use a super and eke, which would then fit brood frames, then after we’ve united the swarm and old hive, swapping the super and eke back for the brood box on top of it. I wondered if there might be a better approach here as this seems as if it could be stressful for the girls?
3. We also need a new queen for our other hive (the one which didn’t swarm), as the current one is getting old. We’d considered that instead of employing option 2. we could remove the old queen from the hive which didn’t swarm, uniting the swarmed colony and it’s queen with it. This would potentially leave the hive which swarmed weaker, but I wondered whether any of you had any views as to whether this might be preferable.
I also had a trip to the emergency room after moving the swarm due to an anaphylactic shock reaction. Unfortunately this means that my partner will have to deal with bees, hence I want to be as clear as possible about we do. Thank you.
