babnik42
New Bee
...I know you should never panic, but..
I have 3 hives and all are strong after the winter. However one of them is especially strong. On Sunday, I decided to have a closer look. I already have a super on this hive with a QE in between. As I took off the super, bees were everywhere. I then took off the QE and noticed that there were larvae in comb that was built in between the tops of the frames and the QE. I've never seen that before and I assumed it meant the queen was running out of space. Also, I finally understood what people mean by "Bees boiling out of the hive". They weren't aggressive and were not flying out, just spilling out over the sides. So far so good. I didn't panic, and thought, I need to replace a couple of store frames with empty frames to give her majesty some space to lay. I started on one side and found just a single frame of stores. The other 9 frames were packed with brood and nurse bees (plus honey and pollen of course). Now I started to panic a bit. (bees everywhere at the moment, still not aggressive though). Personally I thought it was a little early for an artificial swarm, but I needed to make space, so I thought artificial swarm it is. I saw capped drone brood, although I didn't see any drones (in my state of panic, it is possible they were there). There was no chance of finding the queen. Way too many bees, so I decided to do an overnight split. I took three frames (too many perhaps?) of brood, making sure that I had some eggs and young larvae in at least one, plus the store frame. Shook the bees off and placed in another box, which I completed with empty frames and put it on top of the original hive with a QE in between. I replaced the 4 frames with foundation. The next day I took those 4 frames, now covered in nurse bees and put them in a 5 frame nuc with an extra empty frame.
So did I jump the gun? I think it maybe too early to split, but I think I definitely needed to make space. Perhaps putting a few frames into weaker hives would have been a better option? Although I don't have a truly 'weak' hive. I'm obviously a few hundred kms further south than most of you in the UK, so everything is probably a few weeks earlier than for a lot of you.
I have 3 hives and all are strong after the winter. However one of them is especially strong. On Sunday, I decided to have a closer look. I already have a super on this hive with a QE in between. As I took off the super, bees were everywhere. I then took off the QE and noticed that there were larvae in comb that was built in between the tops of the frames and the QE. I've never seen that before and I assumed it meant the queen was running out of space. Also, I finally understood what people mean by "Bees boiling out of the hive". They weren't aggressive and were not flying out, just spilling out over the sides. So far so good. I didn't panic, and thought, I need to replace a couple of store frames with empty frames to give her majesty some space to lay. I started on one side and found just a single frame of stores. The other 9 frames were packed with brood and nurse bees (plus honey and pollen of course). Now I started to panic a bit. (bees everywhere at the moment, still not aggressive though). Personally I thought it was a little early for an artificial swarm, but I needed to make space, so I thought artificial swarm it is. I saw capped drone brood, although I didn't see any drones (in my state of panic, it is possible they were there). There was no chance of finding the queen. Way too many bees, so I decided to do an overnight split. I took three frames (too many perhaps?) of brood, making sure that I had some eggs and young larvae in at least one, plus the store frame. Shook the bees off and placed in another box, which I completed with empty frames and put it on top of the original hive with a QE in between. I replaced the 4 frames with foundation. The next day I took those 4 frames, now covered in nurse bees and put them in a 5 frame nuc with an extra empty frame.
So did I jump the gun? I think it maybe too early to split, but I think I definitely needed to make space. Perhaps putting a few frames into weaker hives would have been a better option? Although I don't have a truly 'weak' hive. I'm obviously a few hundred kms further south than most of you in the UK, so everything is probably a few weeks earlier than for a lot of you.