- Joined
- Aug 15, 2012
- Messages
- 19
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Manchester
- Hive Type
- 14x12
- Number of Hives
- 2+1
I have a 14x12 brood box with three shallow supers on top. No queen excluder. All three supers are fairly full and I went to the apiary today planning on clearing the top one in order to return it.
Looking through it today I found that two neighbouring shallow frames in the middle of the box had a small area of drone brood in the bottom centre of the frames. One frames's brood was capped, as drones, the other not so not definitely drones on that frame I suppose. There are no gaps in the laying pattern, which covers about two inches deep by about four, arch-shaped. This is the top super. I decided to look further, so went through the other two supers, finding plenty of capped stores and no more brood. I went through the 'brood' box and found plenty of eggs, BIAS, and a queen. There was an empty drawn frame at the outside of the box - isolated from the brood area by stores. There were a few queen cups but nothing with eggs in.
I put a queen excluder onto this, then put the supers back, and decided to tear up the drone brood in the top super with the hive tool.
I hope that this will put a stop to it: that the queen wandered up there, laid a few eggs and wandered back down; that the bees will clear out the cells and fill them with honey; and that this is nothing to worry about. But I wonder if something else is going on. Could a weak queen be producing too little pheromone, allowing workers to lay eggs at the top? If so I can't think of anything I would do anyway, but maybe another beek has seen something similar, and taken some specific action? Should I encourage supercedure somehow, while there are still drones about for a good mating?
I've no reason to think there are two queens in this colony: it's the product of an artificial swarm earlier this year and I have since seen no queen cells with eggs or sealed in it.
Cheers, Mark
Looking through it today I found that two neighbouring shallow frames in the middle of the box had a small area of drone brood in the bottom centre of the frames. One frames's brood was capped, as drones, the other not so not definitely drones on that frame I suppose. There are no gaps in the laying pattern, which covers about two inches deep by about four, arch-shaped. This is the top super. I decided to look further, so went through the other two supers, finding plenty of capped stores and no more brood. I went through the 'brood' box and found plenty of eggs, BIAS, and a queen. There was an empty drawn frame at the outside of the box - isolated from the brood area by stores. There were a few queen cups but nothing with eggs in.
I put a queen excluder onto this, then put the supers back, and decided to tear up the drone brood in the top super with the hive tool.
I hope that this will put a stop to it: that the queen wandered up there, laid a few eggs and wandered back down; that the bees will clear out the cells and fill them with honey; and that this is nothing to worry about. But I wonder if something else is going on. Could a weak queen be producing too little pheromone, allowing workers to lay eggs at the top? If so I can't think of anything I would do anyway, but maybe another beek has seen something similar, and taken some specific action? Should I encourage supercedure somehow, while there are still drones about for a good mating?
I've no reason to think there are two queens in this colony: it's the product of an artificial swarm earlier this year and I have since seen no queen cells with eggs or sealed in it.
Cheers, Mark
