A little advice needed please!

[wood blewit]

Last year I hived a swarm that my neighbour had seen in an apple tree down the road.It wasn't a massive swarm but it had a queen and they seemed healthy and happy in there new home, but even though the queen was laying and new bees hatching out they didn't really grow as a good strong hive so I re-queened them, which went well, new queen accepted eggs brood etc, but as it was getting late in the season I thought a quick fix may be to amalgamate this small hive with another that was doing quite well to help them build up enough stores to successfully make it through the winter months, this I did and was quite smug as this was the first time I had done this and it went without a hitch. I used the newspaper method but just before I put hives together I sprayed them both with lemongrass and peppermint to mask odours of each hive . So successful joining of hives bees build up nicely seemed like plenty of stores for winter , fed them sugar water which they took for a while then stopped so i presumed the larder must be full and I shut up shop for winter.
OMG opened my hive nice warm day last week as an acute lack of action compared to my other hives was more than apparent .On opening I was shocked to find about 1500 bees if not less, there is a queen but no eggs or capped brood it doesn't seem like a happy hive at all can any body guide me out of this mess please? my own thoughts was to requeen asap take some capped brood from one of my healthier hives and see if i cannot build the hive up that way. Help desperately sort please guys n gals .

 

[enrico]

If they have food....do they? Sounds like starvation to me!
E

 

[JEP]

Sometimes it is best to cut your losses with a poor hive and kill the queen and unite to a decent hive. 1500 Bees is hardly any and they would all be old. It would almost certainly be a waste of bees and brood from another hive not to mention the cost of a queen. Get the hive cleaned up and in a month you will be able to split a decent hive and restock it.

 

[wood blewit]

They had a double 14x12 brood and two supers full of stores in autumn more than enough I thought .

 

[wood blewit]

Thanks JEP I tend to agree with you but just let me throw something into the mix here:
one of my hives is ballistic I have never seen so many bees this early on, also I have been fancying having a go with an AMM colony, and I have access to a genetically acceptable AMM Welsh Queen Bee, would it be prudent to Requeen with afore mentioned queen add some brood from my rampant hive and then build up my new black bee hive from there still fairly new at this so my ideas could be way off the mark sorry .

 

[JEP]

If you can get a decent queen for free then it might be worth a go (lucky you if you can). Depends if you have plenty of spare equipment really. It would be a shame to have a decent hive swarm later on in the year because you were using equipment to nurse along a colony that wasn't really worth messing about with.

 

[Margaret Elisabeth]

I had the same problem with one hive no brood no aroma at all, but still has stores. Never saw the queen last year but she laid well. I got in touch with the bee inspector as there was mould on some pollen in the BB and sunken cappings but at the edge of BB where it shoud be honey. very peculiar. Other hive working like mad. Clearing old and dead winter stems around the hive this afternoon there was a reassuring aroma from the hive. Bee inspector due to call tomorrow if weather is good enough so we will see then.

 

[wood blewit]

hey margaret thats quite funny because I had mold and a little bit of black gunky stuff on the outer bbs. Let me know your results please .
regards Andy

 

[wood blewit]

Hey JEP , yeah I have another two hives set up ready for the swarming season so room at the inn , I think I am gonna have a go with this new queen , where I live there is a corridor on the welsh border where the beekeepers are really proud of there AMM queens and are trying to get an overlap of beekeepers and bees along this corridor as they believe they are as true native as they can get so why not help out on this scheme. thanks for your advice , regards Andy