Biodlaren
New Bee
Hi!
In middle of July I tried to raise some queens. To do that I have to choose a good hive and make it queenless, and preferably even free from young brood. I hate to try to find the queen, often I can not find her and the bees getting more and more irritated. The easiest way to make the hive queenless is to simply lift away the brood-nest. So I did. I lifted away the two boxes of brood-nest and placed it in another spot in my apiary with the entrance facing the other way. Left on the original spot was only the supers with a new box underneath where I placed my queen-frames with newly re-grafted young larva. This method I have used before and it use to work out just fine.
The next day it is time to put the brood-nest back on the original spot, and place the queen-frames with now hopefully new build queen cells above the queen-excluder, and of course, the supers on top. When I now should lift back the brood-nest from it's temporary spot I could see loads of dead bees outside the entrance. On the entrance, on the ground underneath and even on the temporary bottom board. I estimated it to 3 liters of dead bees!
What had happened here? First thing I thought of was if they have no air supply, but they had a 300mm wide enthance so that should not have been an issue. The other ting I could come up with was if some other strong colony have began robbing. But the brood-nest don't have as much honey, and the guard bees (is this correct term?) are still left in the brood-nest to protect the now smaller hive.
I have a hard time to understan what happened. This method use to work out just fine. The only drawback use to be that it doesn't make as many queens as other methods. No dead bees.
In middle of July I tried to raise some queens. To do that I have to choose a good hive and make it queenless, and preferably even free from young brood. I hate to try to find the queen, often I can not find her and the bees getting more and more irritated. The easiest way to make the hive queenless is to simply lift away the brood-nest. So I did. I lifted away the two boxes of brood-nest and placed it in another spot in my apiary with the entrance facing the other way. Left on the original spot was only the supers with a new box underneath where I placed my queen-frames with newly re-grafted young larva. This method I have used before and it use to work out just fine.
The next day it is time to put the brood-nest back on the original spot, and place the queen-frames with now hopefully new build queen cells above the queen-excluder, and of course, the supers on top. When I now should lift back the brood-nest from it's temporary spot I could see loads of dead bees outside the entrance. On the entrance, on the ground underneath and even on the temporary bottom board. I estimated it to 3 liters of dead bees!
What had happened here? First thing I thought of was if they have no air supply, but they had a 300mm wide enthance so that should not have been an issue. The other ting I could come up with was if some other strong colony have began robbing. But the brood-nest don't have as much honey, and the guard bees (is this correct term?) are still left in the brood-nest to protect the now smaller hive.
I have a hard time to understan what happened. This method use to work out just fine. The only drawback use to be that it doesn't make as many queens as other methods. No dead bees.