I panicked...

[babnik42]

...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.

 

[RobKing]

...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.

May I ask whether your bees have been OK since the split? I did an inspection last Saturday and one of my hives has been sending out guard bees to do me in ever since. There seem to be many threads mentioning bees who are being hypersensitive at the moment. I too have a busy brood chamber, but was thinking of adding another half brood for the queen but not sure.

 

[moo]

If you have access to a mated queen then you didn't panic you thought on your feet. If you don't have a queen or chance of getting one mated in your area I would suggest double brood for now then there is plenty of space for her majesty to lay and when you can get a queen you just need to split the 2 boxes (giving each equal proportions of brood, pollen and stores of course)

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sent from my smartphone.. although it doesn't filter my not-so-smart comments

 

[Pete D]

If I read this right you have a hive that we all aspire to have right now, It probably just needed another super, maybe even double brood.
You are now going to force the split half to produce emergency queen cells.
You have weakened your foraging force by taking nurse bees that will be replaced by foragers, and who is gonna draw the foundation.

I have just been to check on 8 hives in my lunch break, all on OSR, all 14x12. They all had one super, now 4 of them have 2, minimum was 8 frames of brood, plenty of drone brood and plenty of bees. Just how I like them, if this keeps up I could be extracting in a couple of weeks.

My advice would be double brood it now after removing emergency queen cells.

Good luck

 

[babnik42]

These dadant hives are massive and whilst they need space, I think a double dadant full size maybe overkill. I don't know. I wanted to split anyway at some point. I'd prefer to raise my own queens than buy them in (not that I have a source of them at the moment). Even though I have weakened the mother hive, it really has so many hives I don't really see a diminishing of bees (definitely are because I took a whole load out). It's still packed with bees and there are a lot of bees emerging soon.

Would I be ok to double up the brood chamber now (i.e. take them out of the nuc and move them again). Perhaps a super UNDER the QE would be a better option but then I have brood in the wrong size frames.

As to the bees temperament...I'd say they are a little tetchy, but then my bees always are.

 

[susbees]

Just an observation - are you using the right sort of QE for your beespace?

And I agree, supering should have worked. The first sight of a properly stocked colony is ALWAYS a memorable moment. Most don't understand the concept until they've met the situation you have described...

Enjoy (the honey )

 

[Pete D]

Hi ,
I noticed after posting that you are on Dadant ( and over seas) so double brood should not be required.
I would of banged a couple of extra supers on under the existing one if they are that big and busy.
You can still do this, it just means going back in and rearranging the brood frames.
You want as many bees as possible in the hive to allow them to give you a surplus of honey, unless of course you want more hives.
Emergency queens are not the normal way of making splits.

There will be a lot of big busy hives here in the UK in the next few weeks which bodes well for a big crop if the sun shines and we can keep them all in the same box.

 

[babnik42]

I currently have 3 hives and would like to go into the winter with 5 or 6. Not too worried about honey this year. Thinking of it as more a consolidation year, but the way things are looking I can probably still get a good harvest AND increase the number of hives. I have never done a split before and you say emergency queens are not the way to go, but I do not want to bring in queens. My reasoning is, and it maybe flawed, these bees came from an old abandoned yard. They had been fending for themselves for maybe 4 or 5 years. In my mind natural selection chose the best bees to survive for OUR climate and available forage. I don't think getting queens in, that were perhaps imported from sunnier climes would result in a better queen. Again this is just my opinion. Not borne from experience (as I have very little), but from common sense. Now I realise I would get a better split if I had a swarm cell or 3, but in this case I didn't. So in short the priorities for this year is to make up say 3 or 4 nucs (hoping for 50% success rate or thereabouts). Perhaps get a swarm. Go into winter with 5 or 6 hives. Any honey which I manage to harvest is just bonus. I've lost about 1 hive a year in the 3 years I have had the bees. about 20% average I'd say as I usually had 5 hives. The reason I would like 5 rather than 3 is just practicality. I have noticed that from 5 hives I usually have 1 very strong. 2 or 3 less so, but usually quite good and the 5th is always a struggle. With 6 hives I have more wiggle room if a hive is weak I can combine. If a hive is queenless I can use eggs from a stronger hive etc etc.

 

[Pete D]

I was not suggesting that you bring any queens in.

If you just allow the hives build up naturally as they want to and at least one of them will give you queen cells. Then from a single hive you could make 3 splits (+the original) allowing you to keep the other 2 for honey production.

Just another option which could give you extra colonies and a honey crop.

I am sure others will be along soon and offer alternatives or endorse your plan.

Good luck with your plans for the year ahead

 

[babnik42]

I hear you and that was the original plan, hence the word 'panic' in the original title. It wasn't my intention to split before I had some viable queen cells. Anyway, I think this hive is so strong that I will still be able to do just that later on this month or early next month. I think I'm going to leave the current nuc split I created and see how things go. I'll put it down to experience and hopefully with the information I have gleaned from this thread I'll be less panicky next time.

I have seen elsewhere mention of checking the split created in this fashion after exactly 7 days and removing all CLOSED queen cells leaving just OPEN ones (hopefully with larvae I guess). The theory being is that if after 7 days you have closed queen cells, they are emergency cells created with 3 day old larvae whereas any open ones will have come from eggs or larvae less than 3 days old and thus you get a better quality queen.

 

[Pete D]

Yes its always much easier with hindsight.

If it happens again, bung them another super or 2 and close up.
This will buy you your hindsight time. Make a plan and go back the next day and execute it.

You will find that seldom do you have to do something right on the spot that cant be left another 24 hours.

I have reacted quickly in the past to what I see and often wish I had shut it up, sat in the van for 20 minutes, had a coffee and made a plan. We all do it.

As I said all the best

 

[oliver90owner]

Just one obvious thought - you did not perform an arfificial swarm unless the bees were in swarm mode.

That means she may yet swarm this year later on when the colony gets stronger.

A far easier way than going double brood would simply have been to remove the Q/E.

Moving a couple frames of emerging brood to a weaker colony was also a simple option. There is often a better option.

As Pete D says, go away and think of all the alternatives before doing anything in a panic.

 

[babnik42]

yeah I agree. Still strong enough that she will want to swarm in a few weeks no doubt. Lesson of the day is to sit back and think before doing anything in haste. Live and learn.