first inspection and i am very confused as well as alittle disheartened

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always weeding

New Bee
Joined
Apr 27, 2012
Messages
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Location
tamworth
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
half
could you look at this frame for me pleae and see if it looks healthy. i undertaook my first inspection today and was expecting something different. saw a few new bees emerging from cells, but more worryingly i was queen cells.
the colony has only been with me for a week and on inspection today there were 3 undrawn frames and they have started working on 3 frmaes since last monday,the five frames that came with the colony are much the same as this one.
any help would be appreciated
I understand that they would only normally make queen cells if there was no room or if there was no queen.

View attachment 6782
 
Did you see the queen and/or any eggs?
 
Looks like drone brood to me a sign of DLQ or laying workers, possibility that the queen was not introduced or accidentally killed in the process and the bees are making a new queen, what state are the queen cells are they charged or just empty cells.
 
There are no signs of eggs ,neither are the play cups charged .
The colony looks short on liquid stores !
The frames have hardly enough bees to keep the brood warm and forage !
I would feed the colony pronto and insert a test frame from another colony . The weather has been appalling , lots of colonies are struggling :(
VM
 
Sorry, just seen the other pictures looks like they are making a new queen
 
I didnt see the queen,there was larvae and new bees emerging and the cells looked as if they were charged
 
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As what Victor said there does not seem enough bees, feed bees knock down queen Cells except one big one and hope for the best as you have no other colony to help it out or if you know a beekeeper who will help you out with a few frames of emerging brood
 
thank you. there was aseveral new bees emerging from cells but there does appear to be fewer bees than last week.lots of bees coming and going to and from the hive brininging back pollen. i am so disappointed as i was really excited befor the inspection and came away feling really disondant
 
forgot to add that they have a feeder on for the last week since i got the colony too.
 
Its very possible with the amount of bees they have already swarmed.
 
Don't be down-hearted Always weeding. Things are not always straightforward in the wonderful world of beekeeping. You may have got off to difficult start, but bees have a way of coming through most that we throw at them. One of your photos does appear to show a sealed queen cell on the bottom bar, so all is not lost. If you can get hold of an experienced beek locally to look through your hive he/she may be able to rest some of your fears. :)
 
I agree with the line about not being disheartened by these events, things like this will be thrown at you, and it makes you more experienced an in the long term if you can stick with it, then it is very rewarding to see that you can make a difference. I'm not very experienced, and had a tough first year, this year is tough too, but made easier through my experiences last year - so get some help if you can, join a local bee keeping society if poss' that'll be a good help to you and you may find that people will be able to give you some help if things go wrong, having 1 hive on it's own is always risky.
Good luck.
 
take down the cells leaving one large one, drop some feed in and keep your fingers crossed for three weeks.
 
If they have not swarmed the possibility is that an expensive queen was placed in a nuc along with a virgin queen and the virgin queen killed the other.

Either way, not a satisfacory way for a purchased nuc to be supplied.

If the supposed queen had provenance, the one in there likely has none. In other words, you may not have got what you paid for.
 
so is there a possibilty that there may be a queen in there and they may need time to settle in? having spoken to a few beekeeping friends they have had a few problems with queen cells in new colonies until the colony settles down. there seemedto be plenty of bees on the frames on the last two pics and i cant see how the queen could have disappeared or died
 
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