Feeding Question

[oliver90owner]

one drone - so we've probably got a week or two!

Thanks, I thought you had only mentioned drone brood thus far.

Drones may need a couple of weeks to mature, so reduced chance of swarming for the next ten days, I would think and there is a lot of time for changes in the plan. Keep it flexible.

I have one hive which has brood on 7 frames (14 x12s and quite well covered) and in a super above; not really added up the brood area covered. But no sign of drones yet, so you are a little ahead of me.

Regards, RAB

 

[mbc]

Waiting for the bees to build natural cells is definately better than taking a q less muc and letting them raise an emergency q

 

[oliver90owner]

In addition to agreement with mbc re queen cells; Splitting the brood nest with a super (or two) would induce supercedure cells rather than emergency cells (so no need to just 'wait', but there needs to be a drone pool (ready and waiting for mating the new queen) and decent weather, so riskier early in the season. Down to personal decision when, and if, to start splitting a colony. Too early, yet, for me, up here in Lincolnshire, unless I want to risk it for a possible quick gain. Better to wait another couple of weeks or more rather than find out in 6 weeks time that the queen is laying drone brood.

Regards, RAB

 

[rae]

Agree. The weather is just too variable - awful today, cold and blowy. I'm glad we ignored the BBC forecast for today, which was hot and sunny and inspected them yesterday.

Edit - and having re-read Mr Hooper, he is adamant that letting a nuc raise a queen from scratch would produce a rubbish queen.

 

[rae]

An update.

We checked thoroughly for queen cells a few hours ago. All of the brood in the super is now capped. The brood box has a lot of capped brood, very few larvae and a small number of eggs. I think that getting "her maj" back in the brood box probably upset her, and put her off laying for a few days. Anyway, she is still there and has started laying again.

There were several structures that looked a bit like queen cups, but could have been drone brood at a funny angle on the foundation. Nothing at all that looked like a proper queen cell.

We have put the 14x12 brood box with foundation between the existing brood and the super, and we'll give them a load of syrup tomorrow so that they can start drawing it out.

Colony 2 seems to have a load of uncapped (but big, about to be capped) larvae in the super, so we left them alone.

 

[Poly Hive]

How many frames of brood have you got Rae?

PH

 

[rae]

7 frames of brood in the brood box, mostly capped, some eggs. 8 frames of brood in the super, all capped, some hatched. Good levels of stores elsewhere.

One question has occurred to me. Should we put the 14x12 underneath the existing brood, or between the existing brood and the super?

Reasons for putting it between: I know bees like to go "up", so putting it above the brood gives them reason to build it.

Reasons for putting it below: if it gets cold, then the bees will go "up", and the brood won't be ready for laying (and the brood below might chill).

 

[rae]

Right, time for an update.

Colony 1. We put the 14x12 brood on top of the existing brood and worried ourselves silly about them being too cold. They got a 5 litre pail of syrup to help with the drawing out. A week after we did this, we inspected and found that the centre 5 frames had been mostly drawn out, the outer frames had been barely touched. The old brood box had plenty of capped brood, some larvae and a few eggs. We worried about the lack of eggs, but not much we could do. So they got another 5 litres of syrup.

Today, we inspected them. 5 perfect frames of capped brood and larvae in the 14x12 - really big, perfect text book example with stores and pollen round the edges. We obviously missed the eggs when we last looked. The outer frames in the 14x12 are full of stores and pollen. The old brood box is also full of capped brood and some larvae, across 7 frames. I fear this colony is going to be monstrous in about 2 weeks!

There wasn't a lot of room in the hive, so we gave them an additional super of foundation. Should keep them busy for a week.....

Colony 2. Is quite happy, not as prolific, eggs, larvae and capped brood. Also seemed very full, so they got a super as well.

One question. At what point would queens be available? I'd like to take the old brood box from colony 1 and split it into two nucs, but I'll need a queen or two!

 

[oliver90owner]

Anytime now. GYO queens?

Separate boxes with a super (queen in bottom brood);make sure there are eggs in the top box and wait, Repeat adding eggs as necessary, another super between if necessary until queen cells are built by the supercedure impulse. Split off nucs before queen cells are capped (just in case....) and leave them well fed for a couple of weeks or three.

Alternatively, do an artificial swarm with the old queen, so she has had her 'swarming' instinct satisfied and allow one of the queen cells (above) to develop in the main broodnest and, along with the other nuc developing, you have your increase.

Regards, RAB

 

[rae]

You're right about growing your own. However, as something of a beginner, I'm nervous about provoking them into building queen cells, knowing my luck, they'd be off over the horizon before I managed to split them!