The Riviera Kid
House Bee
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2010
- Messages
- 247
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Leicestershire
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 4
Sorry that my first post on here is a problem seeking advice... I have been keeping bees for just over a year now and seem to have a problem with my queen.
I artificially swarmed my bees on May 14th and destroyed surplus queen cells in my "mother" hive, leaving one to replace the removed queen. When I went back on May 18th, the queen cell that I had left was hatched but the workers had repaired a couple of the queen cells (I wasn't aware that they could do this at that time) and they were sealed once more. I couldn't find a queen and assume that the colony threw a cast. So I destroyed all but one of the remaining cells and waited.
At the beginning of June I found the first brood and thought that everything was OK but as the photos I have attached (taken 9th July) show, I think now that this is far from the case as the brood pattern is wrong. In addition there is at least 50% drone though this hard to see in a photo. One of the "child" colonies that I created through artificial swarming is, in contrast, flourishing with text book frames of brood.
So does it look like my queen is just poor and that I should re-queen to solve the problem?
The close up picture shows that there *appears* to be worker brood in there so whatever is laying appears to be fertile (= queen and not a laying worker) but the quantity of drone would suggest that she is not *very* fertile. However I read that sometimes when there are no drone cells, worker cells will be used and you get dwarf drone (Is this true??)
There are very few eggs in empty cells and I could find no cells with multiple eggs in. Comparing phots I took 2 weeks ago the patch of brood has barely grown and there are just 3 frames with more or less the same quantity, distribution and type of brood as shown here.
The last picture shows a close up of honey cells... the honey is crystalising but the bees aren't capping it. In fact they are hardly capping any of the honey.
I am just hoping that it's not a laying worker and any advice is very very welcome!!!
Cheers,
Simon
I artificially swarmed my bees on May 14th and destroyed surplus queen cells in my "mother" hive, leaving one to replace the removed queen. When I went back on May 18th, the queen cell that I had left was hatched but the workers had repaired a couple of the queen cells (I wasn't aware that they could do this at that time) and they were sealed once more. I couldn't find a queen and assume that the colony threw a cast. So I destroyed all but one of the remaining cells and waited.
At the beginning of June I found the first brood and thought that everything was OK but as the photos I have attached (taken 9th July) show, I think now that this is far from the case as the brood pattern is wrong. In addition there is at least 50% drone though this hard to see in a photo. One of the "child" colonies that I created through artificial swarming is, in contrast, flourishing with text book frames of brood.
So does it look like my queen is just poor and that I should re-queen to solve the problem?
The close up picture shows that there *appears* to be worker brood in there so whatever is laying appears to be fertile (= queen and not a laying worker) but the quantity of drone would suggest that she is not *very* fertile. However I read that sometimes when there are no drone cells, worker cells will be used and you get dwarf drone (Is this true??)
There are very few eggs in empty cells and I could find no cells with multiple eggs in. Comparing phots I took 2 weeks ago the patch of brood has barely grown and there are just 3 frames with more or less the same quantity, distribution and type of brood as shown here.
The last picture shows a close up of honey cells... the honey is crystalising but the bees aren't capping it. In fact they are hardly capping any of the honey.
I am just hoping that it's not a laying worker and any advice is very very welcome!!!
Cheers,
Simon