Don't You Just Love Them

[Millet]

I went to the bees today with all intentions of collecting some supers for extraction, pulled the first frame out which was half capped and read 17% on the refractometer (jackpot), pulled the second one out and part of it had young brood in it, i pulled the third out and it had a charged Queen cell, the Queen which is not small has some how managed to get through the excluder and back down again.

I decided to go through the brood boxes which i did not do properly last week through the amount of space she has and found around 15 Queen cells two sealed and the rest in several stages of growth, it has certainly flung a spanner in the works as i did not go prepared for this encounter.

The Queen is clipped with still plenty of room to lay so i do not know why this has happened and with her being clipped will give me more time to sort them out tomorrow (maybe the clipped wing i did over a week ago ? )..

The way this hive is positioned near a fence and three foot from the another hive will make it awkward to do a pagden, so i plan on doing a three way split tomorrow, i will put two frames with Queen cells brood and food on the original spot in two separate nucs and move the main colong with the laying Queen in it a small distance away..

Does that sound like a half decent plan..
Thank's
Steve.

 

[enrico]

Sounds good to me. Sounds to me like your excluder is duff. Is it a wire one, metal one or a plastic one
E

 

[Millet]

Sounds good to me. Sounds to me like your excluder is duff. Is it a wire one, metal one or a plastic one
E

Thank you, it is a wired excluder from Abelo i do not like the other types, maybe a fault with this one ? , i have the same excluders on two other hives which are fine it has me stumped, i will check the spacing between each slot tomorrow when i have finished what i have to do.

 

[Eyeman]

Thank you, it is a wired excluder from Abelo i do not like the other types, maybe a fault with this one ? , i have the same excluders on two other hives which are fine it has me stumped, i will check the spacing between each slot tomorrow when i have finished what i have to do.

I had the same and one of the wires had been slightly pushed across by my hive tool.

 

[Madge]

Perhaps - on a previous occasion when inspecting the colony, the queen might have been on the excluder, and then you turned it over when you put the colony together again, so she ended up in the super. Perhaps ...

 

[Millet]

Perhaps - on a previous occasion when inspecting the colony, the queen might have been on the excluder, and then you turned it over when you put the colony together again, so she ended up in the super. Perhaps ...

That is a good point but not for me , i always check the excluder then shake the bees of into the brood box before scraping clean of wax, i also always put the excluder back the same way as it came out, i must check it tomorrow and if all is ok this Queen is related to houdini..

 

[Millet]

I had the same and one of the wires had been slightly pushed across by my hive tool.

A possibility but i always scrape length ways instead of across if you get my drift..

 

[Eyeman]

A possibility but i always scrape length ways instead of across if you get my drift..

I also make a point of scraping in the direction of the wires. I wonder if my wires got distorted by putting the hive tool in too deep when separating the super from the QE? Just a guess!

 

[Millet]

I also make a point of scraping in the direction of the wires. I wonder if my wires got distorted by putting the hive tool in too deep when separating the super from the QE? Just a guess!

I checked the Excluder today and i can not see any fault, i changed it just to be on the safe side.

 

[Millet]

I split them into three today and for some reason they where very calm ? , loads more capped Queen cells than i thought once i had slowly gone through them properly.

Two things i seen today that i have not seen before is the bees where very lethargic and the Queen was running fairly quickly, quicker than normal, they where also doing a funny dance that i can only describe as a type of Mexican wave ? , also they was a funny high pitched quiet screaming noise coming from somewhere in the hive..

Have i caught them on the point of swarming and what could that funny noise be, a Virgin Queen maybe.. ? .

 

[Millet]

After no reply from the forum Experts i decided to what i normally do and i found this, the sound on this clip is the exact same as i could hear in the hive, no wonder the 2017 Queen was running around so fast, she was rather hunting or being hunted by a 2018 virgin.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYecvVhkpKI

 

[linoleum bonypart]

Virgins piping

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

workers also pipe as a precursor to swarming

 

[Millet]

workers also pipe as a precursor to swarming

You are too Good and i dare say you are 99'9% correct , i seen the start of Queen cells last week and the ones i removed today still had fat larvae in them, so that noise got me thinking, it was too early for a virgin to emerge, so i thought worker but unsure.
I did not know workers did that and thank you ..

 

[Erichalfbee]

workers also pipe as a precursor to swarming

Yes I’ve heard it too. Half an hour before buzz runs start the piping starts and then they are off

 

[Brigsy]

I still have one hive which has not swarmed and has no queen cells which is still making deep piping noises. Very strange.

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

 

[Bakerbee]

Thanks for that link millet. I shall now know what to listen for. If they were prepping to swarm could the queen have got through excluder as shes slimmed down? Or once shes slimmed down ready to swarm does she not lay? Just beginners musings.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Thanks for that link millet. I shall now know what to listen for. If they were prepping to swarm could the queen have got through excluder as shes slimmed down? Or once shes slimmed down ready to swarm does she not lay? Just beginners musings.

If a queen couldn't go through a queen excluder before slimming down, she won't after - the thorax stays the same size and that's the part that stops her getting through.

 

[Millet]

If a queen couldn't go through a queen excluder before slimming down, she won't after - the thorax stays the same size and that's the part that stops her getting through.

Could the workers have moved some eggs through the excluder as the Queen is definitely too big to fit through herself , i marked and clipped her a couple of weeks ago in a slotted marking tube, the workers cleared from the tube easily but for all the Queen tried to get out she could not get through.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Bees moving eggs. Dunno. Asked this earlier. All I can say is I get lots of play cups on the bottom bars of the bottom super in big busy colonies but I have never found a queen cell there