advice please, quick

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justme

Field Bee
Joined
May 27, 2010
Messages
896
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0
Location
Middle of Cornwall. uk
Hive Type
Other
Number of Hives
10(OSB hives)1 National
i have a cast with a nice new queen but being seriously robbed out. I have 2 other colonies, 1 with 2009 queen other 2010. 2009 colony on 2 osb boxes (equiv brood n half) 24 frames. 2010 on 1 osb, both bursting with bees. If it was earlier i would have taken a box off 2009 colony and reunited cast with q- half. I think too late now, although i could take old q out and use the whole colony. what would u do? Needs to be done asap.and i may need to make another floor and roof, depending. Thanks, di:.)
 
I guess it depends how strong the hive is that's being robbed, who's doing the robbing - bees/wasps and whether you have another site to move them to.

As an immediate stop-gap, feed and close up the hive entrance including any possible gaps in the brood box for two days. Open up again after an hour or so for a minute to let out the remaining robbers/wasps then close again.

Await advice. Sympathies - we lost two nucs to wasps/robber bees as the dearth came on when we were on holiday :(.
 
If you were to have two weak colonies which the equal one strong colony it is not too late to unite. I will not be deciding, I hope, which colonies to unite until October.

United two colonies last week in October last year. It really depends on the colonies and the weather.

In your case, three strong colonies needs to be the end result. You may need to redistribute some brood or food frames, but as long as you end up with strong colonies it would be OK.

C'mon, it's not September yet! Yes things can go wrong and yes you could unite back to two colonies if things were not to work out.

Regards, RAB
 
Thanks Susbees. Was fairly strong but not now:.( Wasps and bees. No where to move them to at the mo, I was stupid and moved main colony to out apiary a few weeks ago, italian bees! The A/S from them I left at home, appears through all the tearing down of q cells that the one that survived was the one they raised from the frame of eggs I gave them, italian:.(

That means I have Italians in both apiaries and no help to move one back (sadly the main person I could've callled on died on Tuesday from Cancer, diagnosed only last week:.(((.
To make things worse (bee wise) I have run out of time for my swarm to stay in temp apiary, that has to come home tomorrow. Nuc nor swarm are Italian, thankfully.

I would've requeened earlier if I hadn't been totally confused by loads of people saying that Carniolans are the hungry, robbing bees that brood well into winter.

But thats my reason for wanting to keep both swarm queen, marked green so assumed 2009 and this cast queen that I believe is 2010 through the winter. Guess I'll have figure out how to move them somehow.
 
Thanks RAB. better build that other floor and roof then and get on to it. Really need to figure out how to shift A/S from home to apiary then and bring back new hive. Will this be ok? Moving boxes apiary to apiary to unite?
 
update and another question, sorry.

Well just got in from trip round 3 apiaries (1 temp) shutting bees in. Tomorrow morning, daughter to riding lesson and pick bees (non iti) up from temp apiary, take them to home apiary, pick up bees (iti) from home apiary take to out apiary. Pick up nuc (non iti) and 1 box, believed to be q- (roaring much more than others & iti) to bring home. Then to unite with nuc. Hopefully no missed disease, I dont ususally do all three in 1 day, normally 1 each apiary different day.

Uniting, do you think it would be best (quicker & time of year) to spray with sticky smelly stuff and merge immediatley or go the newspaper route?
 

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