Advice please!

[popcornpie]

Opened my 2 hives today as weather so good here. One hive is looking v good, brimming with bees, brood, stores and a beautiful queen

The other hive is not doing so well. Only one frame has sealed worker brood and there are patches of drone brood on 3 other frames. I didn't see eggs or lava. There is also a sealed queen cell at the bottom of one frame. There are plenty of bees but they seem quite small. Not much stores, so I added a rapid feeder with light syrup for now (they had fondant during the winter). They are on brood and a half but are only using the top box at the moment.

Any advice as to what might be going on and how to proceed would be gratefully received. Thank you!

 

[pargyle]

Opened my 2 hives today as weather so good here. One hive is looking v good, brimming with bees, brood, stores and a beautiful queen

The other hive is not doing so well. Only one frame has sealed worker brood and there are patches of drone brood on 3 other frames. I didn't see eggs or lava. There is also a sealed queen cell at the bottom of one frame. There are plenty of bees but they seem quite small. Not much stores, so I added a rapid feeder with light syrup for now (they had fondant during the winter). They are on brood and a half but are only using the top box at the moment.

Any advice as to what might be going on and how to proceed would be gratefully received. Thank you!

There are a few possibilities - there's another thread running at present about queenless colonies but it looks as though you have a queen who has been laying if you have sealed worker brood. Not masses of drone cells so probably not laying workers or a drone laying queen. With one queen cell I suspect they have had enough of her poor laying and have decided to supercede her - nothing much you can do with one queen cell except leave them be for the time being and see what happens.

If you can't see eggs or larvae then odds are she's either recently dead or gone right off laying ...

Fairly early for a new queen to get mated I'm afraid but the bees won't kill the existing queen until they have a new one that has started to perform - you could find that you have two queens in the hive for a while.

Once you know what's happened in a week or two you can then make a decision about what to do next ... re-queen, unite with the other hive, or thank the lord that you have a laying queen ... choices,choices, choices ...

 

[popcornpie]

Thank you for the clear advice. Looks like I need to be patient and wait and see, something I'm not very good at but the bees are helping me to improve!

 

[pargyle]

Thank you for the clear advice. Looks like I need to be patient and wait and see, something I'm not very good at but the bees are helping me to improve!

A lot of the time in beekeeping the bees know best and what they are doing - sometimes just letting them get on with it is the best course of action - patience is necessary. But ....

There are other times when you need to interfere - swarm preparations in the season (unless you want to lose all your bees), heavy loads of varroa, disease, all need intervention ....

And possibly other things if you want to be a real beekeeper .... Me ? - Well I'm what Finman delights in calling a 'Leave alone' beekeeper so not a real one !

 

[enrico]

I would let her settle into a rhythm, sometimes it takes a while, but gut reaction says that the rest of the hive are impatient with her too, they may well try and get rid of her at the first opportunity. Keep an eye on them. Fingers crossed!
E

 

[Eyeman]

The other hive is not doing so well. Only one frame has sealed worker brood and there are patches of drone brood on 3 other frames. I didn't see eggs or lava. There is also a sealed queen cell at the bottom of one frame. There are plenty of bees but they seem quite small. Not much stores, so I added a rapid feeder with light syrup for now (they had fondant during the winter). They are on brood and a half but are only using the top box at the moment.

A couple of suggestions
1. Reduce the space so the bees can better manage their environment. Take off the unused bottom box.
2. You made the sensible decision to have 2 hives which has allowed you to identify there is something wrong with this one.
3. At this time of year the queen should be getting up to her maximum laying rate. I have a similar hive to yours with a single uncapped queen cell in which I can see the larvae. If you want to try and keep the colony you are going to have to add more bees. Your remaining bees will gradually dwindle whilst your crossing your finger that a queen will emerge from that queen cell and get mated.
4. To add more bees and help discover if you still have a queen in that hive I would remove the queen cell and donate a frame of eggs / young larvae from your prosperous hive (test frame).