Is my queen failing?

[rolande]

I suspect that the best course of action is to re-queen, with a frame of eggs from a strong hive.

I imagine that your mentor will disagree as to that being the best way to re-queen a struggling (failing?) colony.

 

[Erichalfbee]

best course of action is to re-queen, with a frame of eggs from a strong hive.

I would be much much happier with a nice buckfast laying queen from Pete Little

I suspect Acarine,

Acarine affects young bees, They crawl around on the ground in front of the hive and climb blades of grass, unable to fly.

Easy to test for if you have one of those neat USB microscopes.

 

[Mrs Webmuppet]

They aren't crawling around in front of the hive, they just aren't flying with the same enthusiasm as the other bees, they are quite 'lazy' and the queen only seems to lay enough to keep the hive ticking over. I hopefully will go over later this week and sort out the failing hive.

My mentors bees are descendants of Buckfast bees, they are lovely calm bees and normally very industrious. My new hive of bees just a few feet from my garden bench and they just carry on ignoring me while I sit and have a cuppa (it's a bit unnerving when a drone takes off, what a racket, it's like one of those big transport planes taking off)