- Joined
- Jan 12, 2009
- Messages
- 2,132
- Reaction score
- 1,054
- Location
- Newburyish
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 6
In the interest of experiment, and to have a bit of a play with other hive types, we tried a Dadant this year. The idea was it would let the colony find it's own size, without any box constraints. We put a swarm into a 6 frame poly Dadant nuc, and it did quite well, so transferred it to a full size broodbox.
All the frames (hoffman) were new, with good fresh wax. (as were those from the nuc).
Around about then things started to go off the rails:
New comb was drawn, but because the frames are so big, they are not planar, and indeed one frame has ended up with a bit of a cave system running through it.
After a while, the colony swarmed. No apparent reason. Caught the swarm, put it in a nuc, doing well. Meanwhile, back in the Dadant, We knocked back to one QC. And waited. After about 6 weeks, there was no queen. So we united with the nuc through newspaper. In spite of the newspaper, fighting took place, but it all settled down. On the next inspection, there was no queen, but a fair few queen cells. So we knocked back to one QC and are now waiting.
Are Dadants difficult to get going? or is it just this colony? Sorry about the long winded post...
All the frames (hoffman) were new, with good fresh wax. (as were those from the nuc).
Around about then things started to go off the rails:
New comb was drawn, but because the frames are so big, they are not planar, and indeed one frame has ended up with a bit of a cave system running through it.
After a while, the colony swarmed. No apparent reason. Caught the swarm, put it in a nuc, doing well. Meanwhile, back in the Dadant, We knocked back to one QC. And waited. After about 6 weeks, there was no queen. So we united with the nuc through newspaper. In spite of the newspaper, fighting took place, but it all settled down. On the next inspection, there was no queen, but a fair few queen cells. So we knocked back to one QC and are now waiting.
Are Dadants difficult to get going? or is it just this colony? Sorry about the long winded post...