Bee behaviours

[bpmurray]

I am confused by behaviours that I just can't rationalise/understand - perhaps someone else can.

From mid-Sept one of my hives had no brood and I couldn't find the queen. I suspected they might be Q- but I was sufficiently uncertain to not risk uniting with a colony I knew was queenright. It was suggested here that I should try a test frame, but my other hives didn't have a whole lot of brood, so I took a cookie-cutter and transferred a disc of eggs/brood to the suspect hive in early Oct. and left it a week. I was surprised to find that the disc was completely empty - the bees had removed the brood!

Clearly this was not what I expected and it definitely hadn't answered the question of whether the hive was queenright or not. So I left it another couple of weeks. Then at the end of Oct, when the ivy was in full flow, I checked and there were four frames of beautifully laid out brood.

My suspicion is that there was no flow (apart from ragwort) so they shut up shop until they had nectar again. Once the ivy came available, they restarted egg production.

• Can the workers simply turn off & on the queen's egg-laying according to conditions or is ti a function of the queen herself?
• Was this caused by the fact there was no flow?
• What are best practices at that time of year to prevent me descending into a panic again next year?

 

[alldigging]

https://modulenotes.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/module-6-study-notes.pdf

p7 of that might help. Or not.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

• Can the workers simply turn off & on the queen's egg-laying according to conditions or is ti a function of the queen herself?
• Was this caused by the fact there was no flow?
• What are best practices at that time of year to prevent me descending into a panic again next year?

*01Yes
*02Probably - although most if not all my colonies have a break from brooding around about August/September time regardless of the pollen situaton.
*03 a)take up another hobby to complement beekeeping, such as gin drinking
b) stop looking into the hive from September onwards unless there's a real and pressing reason to do so and accept that there is not much you can do to remedy it even if there is an issue.

took me a while to get all that sorted but as far as *03 a) is concerned I also dabble in malt whisky drinking now and then to break the monotony
and with *03 b) by the end of September I am occupied with the advent of the hunting and shooting season so I can occupy myself with that instead

 

[bpmurray]

Thank you for the responses. I think the 3b answer is actually key: the bees know much better than I do about how they should behave.

 

[Plenty of honey]

Dabbling is my biggest downfall, but i got a nice surprise today. One of my Nucs that was queen less has a new queen and is laying, thank you mild October, bonkers though it is, she found a few drones and might make it through the winter!! That does deserve a malt!!
jenkinsbrynmair!! Its always a long winter, regardless of the weather!!

 

[Jimy Dee]

BP, on the basis that you have our own native black queen, she has an inbuilt genetic ability to turn on and off laying like a tap in response to nectar flow, so your questions are right on the money and your understanding of the situation well founded. I found this year was bizzare. The briars ended in September and there was absolutely nothing worth talking about till the ivy started. Practically all my queens shut down during this gap and in early October the hives needed feeding. There were buachailláins but they are as good as worthless in my opinion, may be a bit of pollen but essentially no use. Your black queen will belt on again once the ivy flows. As a believer in our own black queens I believe that their really strong selling point is their responsiveness to what is coming into the hive vis a vis their egg laying. (I never had any other type so can only go off second hand info that the yellow italians are more docile). Our own black bees are sensible, thrifty and the best bee for us in this little island off Europe. Nature has been honing their suitability to our climate for thousands and thousands of years, my belief is to go with the flow on this one. Go néirí leat.