Brood breaks and no eggs

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To expand on the original question .and not to be confused with say winter reduction in egg laying

1) when And why can we expect a queen to stop laying for a short period.
2) if we note a queen isn’t laying new eggs how long do we tell ourselves “she is on a brood break”

1. when you get continuous cold weather and bees are unable to fly so no food input OR - Drought so no nectar OR gap between two crops = no food coming in. Or this year all three at once!
2. Until she starts laying when there is nectar /pollen coming in - in volume.

I get brood breaks every summer as it usually rains in July and August!
 
Does anyone record variation in the amount of brood and use the data to time varroa treatments?
Not sure there’s any data worth recording due to seasonal/area variations. This season tailed off nicely no brood breaks for me. A couple of years ago with the drought most shut down until I took the honey off and stuck a bit of sugar on. The important thing is bees respond to the environment. You can have all the data in the world but as a beekeeper you need to see what the bees are doing. Ian
 
My colonies also take brood breaks at different times and there are times when brood area falls without a full break. Knowing more about brood area would be useful to timing Varroa treatment. I have never considered it practical to estimate brood area on each frame. Does anyone?
 
My colonies also take brood breaks at different times and there are times when brood area falls without a full break. Knowing more about brood area would be useful to timing Varroa treatment. I have never considered it practical to estimate brood area on each frame. Does anyone?

I've been watching a recorded talk by Etienne Tardif who likes to monitor the internal temperature of the hive in great detail. One of the benefits of this is that by tracking the temperature changes he gets reliable feedback that brood rearing has dwindled. In this video, for him, this is the cue to start feeding them pollen..

 
Is there much call for this in the UK?
Does anybody do it?

I mentioned it only to give the context; the beekeeper in question, for whom I have a lot of respect, is located in a cold part of the world whose name I daren't mention at risk of getting drawn into a nippy convesation as a result of being told that I live in a different place. ;)
 
Is there much call for this in the UK?
Does anybody do it?
Yes, I do.
On the good weather days of September and October I visit the bees and tell them to collect ivy pollen. They listen every time 😁

Generally my colonies have a brood break when the income stops. Normally this is the end of August/early September however this year it was at the beginning of August and (no surprise) corresponded with poor weather.
 
I have never seen a full brood break here at the end of summer, I would be worried if that was the case. But the brood nest often reduces considerably in size before the ivy flow which here mostly arrives late September. I often feed a bit of syrup in early September to stimulate them to start producing winterbees early, because if they wait for the ivy it is a bit late although the ivy flow often goes on well into November here.
 

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