Bees going crazy today

[itma]

...
so once the apiguard arrives it will be going in - fingers crossed

ok, 6 days into my treatment ...
Treatment finishes tomorrow, will started banging in feed ...

Lee, Apiguard isn't a 7 day treatment.

How are you using it?

 

[Lee Smeaton]

to be honest i left it in until it was all gone, which was much longer. Anyway roll the calender forward, and I appear to have a happy hive, very busy at the entrance and plenty of pollen coming in, I was worried because it was a small colony. We had very bad winds over winter so the hive is still heavily strapped down (with a bag of cement on top for good measure)
So as tempting as it is to have a look I am going to leave it a while before I have a look inside. I overwintered with the broodbox and a super of stores but didnt put the QE in i took the left and right frames of the super out and laid a slab of candipollen gold vertically in each vacant space. I will need to get the two seperated and make sure I get the queen in the brood box if she has ventured up. My next mission will then be to try and get a second brood box on and drawn out to ultimately move the colony off my existing very messy and badly spaced broodbox hastily built out of the comb of the originally cut out colony

heres a question, should i just leave the existing brood box even if it is a mess as it seems to have survived so far, would the bees remodel the poor spacing between frames to make it right by nibbling back / drawing out as required?

 

[Lee Smeaton]

just to clarify, After the first apiguard tray got chomped the second went in.... because the colony was small i fed the candipollen at the same time. If i am being 100% honest the weather worsened shortly after and the second tray (hopefully empty) is still sat in there as i didnt want to lift the lid and chill everything

 

[Davelin]

They won't respace the frames in your existing box, or at least I'd be very surprised if they did. My advice would be to do a Bailey frame change in a few weeks time when they have really got going. Plenty of threads explaining how to do this.

If they are bringing in plenty of pollen it's a good indication your queen is laying.

 

[Lee Smeaton]

Thanks Davelin, I was thinking along the lines of a Bailey frame change but didnt realise it had a name. As the existing BB is so fused I will just inspect the new BB until I spot the queen laying in it, then swap top and bottom boxes over with the QE between the two and wait for brood in the top box to emerge, then replace with a super and shake out whats was in the top box - does that sound about right?

 

[Davelin]

Well it's more straightforward if you can find the queen, but in you situation I would do as you suggest and put a new brood box on top without an excluder. Hopefully the queen will move up and start laying in this. If you find the queen in the top box put an excluder between the boxes but leave the new one on top. I would shut the bottom entrance and make a new one above the excluder. After three weeks take the bottom box away.