Thanks Teemore Apologies for delay in replying.
A1 - Hive 1 in which you found one or more queen cells and from which you removed the queen, placing her in a Nuc and moving her to A2. You left a queen cell in H1. Hopefully this queen will emerge, get mated and start laying. - Yes, hoping for that.
A1 - Hive 2, a nuc moved into a full hive which has drawn 8 of 12 frames. How many frames of BIAS (Brood In All Stages i.e. eggs, larvae and sealed brood) are in the hive. If you are using National hives and put twelve frames in them, you may well find that it is difficult to remove the first frame from the hive during inspections. Propolis builds up on the shoulders of the frames and with twelve frames tight in the brood box, you loose beespace on the outer sides of the first and last frames - with twelve frames in the box, the bees will often only brood or place stores on the inner face of frames 1 and 12. If the frames are tight to remove, you will roll bees as you remove that first frame and if the queen is one of those, you are creating a whole set of additional problems. BT,DT. I'd recommend 11frames and a dummy board for ease of manipulations. - Frames occupied with BIAS 8 No. Advise heeded re 12th frame , makes great sense as always seems a tight fit removing and replacing. Thanks
2 - nuc made up with Q from H1. How many frames of BIAs are there? Does the queen still have room to lay? This colony may soon need to be moved into a full hive - a laying queen can fill a Nuc with brood very quickly.... Just lift off the crownboard and remove the wild comb when you transfer these bees into a full hive - it sounds like the need the extra space. Be careful the queen is not on this wild comb when you remove it. - No, it is full , fames all occupied by BIAS, and do need to hive it up. Point noted re Queen on Wild Comb.. Thanks
A2 Hive 3. You tore down all the QCs before going on holiday. The colony may already have swarmed when you did this and so you may have left them with no way to replace their queen. Are there any polished cells in this hive? I would suggest that you take a frame from H2 which contains eggs and young larve. Shake ALL the bees off it, wrap it in a warm, slightly damp cloth and transport it to Apiary 2. (If you have another spare, empty Nuc, use it to transport the frame. Place a hot water bottle in the bottom of the transport nuc to keep the brood and larvae warm.) Mark the frame with a drawing pin and place it in the middle of H3. This is a test frame. leave H3 to its own devices for about 5 or 6 days and re-inspect. You should first and foremost look at your marked test frame. If the colony has drawn out queen cells on this frame it confirms that this colony is queenless. - Briliant Thanks.
Received a great offer of help fro JOCTL on forum here and this also really helps, hopefully can get time to execute re arranging. Not had time or motivation lately due to a family illness.
