sandysman
House Bee
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2010
- Messages
- 342
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- North Dodogne
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 3+
I'm into my third year now so still much to learn, but this has foxed me.
On 3rd June I was in the apiary when one of my hives swarmed, I had clearly missed a cell during inspection and they were off. I caught the swarm and re hived them. The original hive from which the swarm issued had 2 supers on it one full the other part full. I checked the hive and found several queen cells, selected the best two, extracted the supers and waited.
On 21st June I inspected the hive and found one of the cells open. So far so good.
On 25th July the queen was laying well and I estimated that there was about 60lbs of honey in three supers, in addition they were laying heavy stores in the brood box and so following Finman's advice I placed a spare brood box above the q/x removed the store frames from the original brood box and replaced them with foundation and drawn comb, placing the full frames above the q/x for the bees to ripen off. At this point I had a brood box being used as a super and three supers, all of which were filling up. Hands were rubbing together in anticipation of a bumper crop.
On 4th August I removed the brood box and one super which produced 38lbs of honey. The wet super was returned to them, as were the wet brood frames, these were duly cleaned out and removed.
Today, 10th August I did a full inspection to find several queen cells, one missing queen and half the bees.
The last time I did a full inspection was on 25th July I suspect I have made the
fatal error of expecting them to have got the swarming out of their system in June after they swarmed.
Any ideas why they would have swarmed again so soon with a young productive queen and loads of room?
The problem I have now of course is that it is getting a bit late for any new queen to hatch and get mated.
Lesson learned
Andy
On 3rd June I was in the apiary when one of my hives swarmed, I had clearly missed a cell during inspection and they were off. I caught the swarm and re hived them. The original hive from which the swarm issued had 2 supers on it one full the other part full. I checked the hive and found several queen cells, selected the best two, extracted the supers and waited.
On 21st June I inspected the hive and found one of the cells open. So far so good.
On 25th July the queen was laying well and I estimated that there was about 60lbs of honey in three supers, in addition they were laying heavy stores in the brood box and so following Finman's advice I placed a spare brood box above the q/x removed the store frames from the original brood box and replaced them with foundation and drawn comb, placing the full frames above the q/x for the bees to ripen off. At this point I had a brood box being used as a super and three supers, all of which were filling up. Hands were rubbing together in anticipation of a bumper crop.
On 4th August I removed the brood box and one super which produced 38lbs of honey. The wet super was returned to them, as were the wet brood frames, these were duly cleaned out and removed.
Today, 10th August I did a full inspection to find several queen cells, one missing queen and half the bees.
The last time I did a full inspection was on 25th July I suspect I have made the
fatal error of expecting them to have got the swarming out of their system in June after they swarmed.
Any ideas why they would have swarmed again so soon with a young productive queen and loads of room?
The problem I have now of course is that it is getting a bit late for any new queen to hatch and get mated.
Lesson learned
Andy
