AS today

[steveselvage]

I finally found the queen in the garden colony today,the green paint that was so clear a few weeks ago was almost rubbed off.
I put her into a new hive on the old stand etc.and then realised there are no fully formed queen cells today, i have been destroying them for a couple of weeks as i couldnt find the queen.There are some partially drawn cells with jelly in them but i couldnt see any eggs as my sight is not brilliant.
I hope ive done the right thing.

 

[admin]

Have a look next weekend for any capped queen cells.

If there are non the you could re-unite with newspaper or give them a frame of brood from the split with the queen in it.

Had the queen stopped laying when you found the queen cells you removed ?

 

[steveselvage]

Last week there were about six queen cells with grubs in but as i missed the queen i cut them out,today there were a lot less eggs present than i normally see.
Ill check them next week and see.
I had a look at the small colony that i collected as a swarm and the queen is laying like there is no tomorrow.

 

[steveselvage]

I checked my bees today after a recent AS and in the "queenless" hive there were about nine capped queen cells,i left one,the biggest and broke the others down,then got to wondering "what if that one doesnt mate" but ill cross that bridge if i need to.
I have seen bees coming and going from the two bait hives that i have on the roof of my sheds, not many so i assumed that they were robbing out anything that may have been on the combs but today i opened the first one and there was a handfull of bees and a queen that had laid up a small area and has brood of all ages just very few bees. I thought id check the other and there is the same, this time more bees and brood i didnt bother to look for a queen as i had nothing to mark her with anyway.
Does this happen a lot, i assumed there would be a mass influx of bees as in polyhives vid.
Should i feed them or let them do there own thing?

 

[oliver90owner]

Time to add hatching brood to those tiny casts. It will give them a boost. You could add some house bees after a liberal dusting of icing sugar to both incoming and resident bees. Leave a day before feeding, if adding hatched bees (to allow any flying bees to return home without issuing robbing directions to the home team!).

Reducing the space would help them. Either a dummy or a divider (better).

If they don't pick up quickly you can always unite them.

Regards, RAB