match
House Bee
- Joined
- May 20, 2009
- Messages
- 124
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- SE Scotland
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 6-8
Something I've seen on and off over the years, and never found a good solution for, so I thought I ask what the rest of you do in this situation...
Afer completing a split (and this seems to happen for me more with Snelgrove than with Pagden) the bees seem to focus on working the supers, often as a tall thin 'vertical' hive. All the flow coming in gets taken upstairs and stored, but they don't draw out any foundation in the brood box. Very quickly the queen fills the few drawn frames that are initially provided, then goes off lay, leaving a relatively weak colony with a ton of honey above them. It's only when the stores are capped that they seem to switch to brood comb, at which point they're behind on building up for the summer flow.
I've often seen this accompanied by half-hearted attempts at supersedure (single QCs that are later abandoned) - as if they know the queen isn't laying enough, but ren't clued up as to why this might be the case!
I've thought about taking the supers off for long enough for the frames to get drawn out, then chuck them back on to get them finished, but I don't like the idea of having to store partially full wet supers.
Any other ideas on how to avoid this behaviour and prevent the interruption in brood laying that it seems to cause?
Afer completing a split (and this seems to happen for me more with Snelgrove than with Pagden) the bees seem to focus on working the supers, often as a tall thin 'vertical' hive. All the flow coming in gets taken upstairs and stored, but they don't draw out any foundation in the brood box. Very quickly the queen fills the few drawn frames that are initially provided, then goes off lay, leaving a relatively weak colony with a ton of honey above them. It's only when the stores are capped that they seem to switch to brood comb, at which point they're behind on building up for the summer flow.
I've often seen this accompanied by half-hearted attempts at supersedure (single QCs that are later abandoned) - as if they know the queen isn't laying enough, but ren't clued up as to why this might be the case!
I've thought about taking the supers off for long enough for the frames to get drawn out, then chuck them back on to get them finished, but I don't like the idea of having to store partially full wet supers.
Any other ideas on how to avoid this behaviour and prevent the interruption in brood laying that it seems to cause?