theCAA
New Bee
So 2 colonies in my apiary were in trouble. No.1 was queenless, no.2 had a new, marked laying queen but had a population of probably less than 500!
No.2's low pop. was due to it being weak to start with, then I fed them some fondant before going away for 3 weeks. I had no one to tend the apiary, and when I got back, the fondant was completely gone and the hive was full of wasps.
It was then that I also discovered no.1 was queenless.
I decided to take drastic action by capturing the queen from 2 and introducing it, in a cage of course, to 1. I would then merge the bees from 2 into a different hive, hive 3. This is the first time I've tried to do this, so I spent a long time finnicking about trying to get her in the cage. In the end I never got her in and I couldn't find her from then on.
All of a sudden the bees started to fly out of the hive - they were swarming! They didn't go far, just to the side of another one of my hives which was less than 5ft away.
I'm not sure whether I distressed the hive and the queen enough to cause this, or whether it was a combination of the wasps, myself, and the domed situation of hive 2.
Since the swarm I found her inside it (it wasn't very big), caged her and introduced her to hive1, took the other bees and put them in hive 3 using the newspaper technique.
I would appreciate any feedback any of you might have with regards to what has gone on, or any advice.
Thanks.
Edit: this all happened today, in September, another reason why I was surprised at the swarm, and thought it was not for you standard reasons.
No.2's low pop. was due to it being weak to start with, then I fed them some fondant before going away for 3 weeks. I had no one to tend the apiary, and when I got back, the fondant was completely gone and the hive was full of wasps.
It was then that I also discovered no.1 was queenless.
I decided to take drastic action by capturing the queen from 2 and introducing it, in a cage of course, to 1. I would then merge the bees from 2 into a different hive, hive 3. This is the first time I've tried to do this, so I spent a long time finnicking about trying to get her in the cage. In the end I never got her in and I couldn't find her from then on.
All of a sudden the bees started to fly out of the hive - they were swarming! They didn't go far, just to the side of another one of my hives which was less than 5ft away.
I'm not sure whether I distressed the hive and the queen enough to cause this, or whether it was a combination of the wasps, myself, and the domed situation of hive 2.
Since the swarm I found her inside it (it wasn't very big), caged her and introduced her to hive1, took the other bees and put them in hive 3 using the newspaper technique.
I would appreciate any feedback any of you might have with regards to what has gone on, or any advice.
Thanks.
Edit: this all happened today, in September, another reason why I was surprised at the swarm, and thought it was not for you standard reasons.
