First Inspection Issues

[Jeff M]

I carried out my first inspection of my new bee colony on Tuesday and found some unexpected issues.

I was intending to buy a Nuc this season, but instead was offered an established colony in a hive for the same money from an experienced bee keeper; no brainer really!

Strating the inspection in the super, the first frame was as expected, some capped honey. However, from the second frame onwards the unexpected appeared. The second frame had a lot of larvae and some capped drone cells. My first thought was drone laying workers, but on successive frames more capped brood appeared until there was a marked queen in the centre of a super frame bold as brass! The super clearly displayed all the signs I expected to see in the brood box.

Checking the brood box below the queen excluder, the brood frames all had honey, some capped.

What I have done, is rebuilt the hive with the super directly on the floor and the brood box above it. I thought that this might encourage the queen to move back up into the brood box, but wasn't sure she could lay if the brood frames were full of honey.

Speaking to another bee keeper, he suggested putting a super of foundation above a queen excluder to encourage the bees to use the honey to draw comb and create space for the queen to lay. This I have done as I do not have any drawn brood comb I can use, being a complete beginner.

Any further advice on this situation would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeff.

 

[dexter's shed]

seems fine to me, now be patient

 

[pargyle]

Classic no room for queen to lay ... only space is in the super as the brood box is clogged with stores ~ so she lays there. Take out some of the honey filled frames in the brood box and replace with empty frames ... if you are using foundation then frames with foundation will be fine - they will build comb when they need it for her to lay eggs - you don't need drawn comb. If you wish you could scrape back the honey filled brood frames that you take out to the spine (I assume you have no means of extracting brood frames ?) and you can give those back to the bees to clean up and rebuild.

Space in the brood box should encourage the queen to go back into the brood box to lay. I'd also take the super full of foundation off the hive for the time being as you are asking a lot of them to build comb in the brood box and in the super.

You will probably lose some of the brood in the super by putting it on the bottom of the hive - as that's going to be the coldest part of the hive and the brood could get chilled if the colony can't cover the frames in both brood box and super. That's not going to be helped by the fact that you put an empty super on top of the hive - which is where all the heat from the colony is going to end up !

Put a slab of kingspan/celotex insulation under the roof if you haven't done already to give them as much chance of keeping the colony warm as you can .. cold today and not that warm tomorrow so sooner the better.

 

[YorkshireBees]

As above, note if you score the sealed honey with the edge of your hive tool this will encourage them to use it / move it.