Laying just started / test frame / feeding?

[sarah28]

I'm in my second year of been keeping - and after a successful first year, the weather this year - combined with my ignorance - seems to have played havoc with my colonies. I began this year with one colony which had survived the winter, my second hive/colony had died out at some point during the winter months. I cleaned up my second hive but left it with some old brood comb and in position. My first colony/hive swarmed in early June while I was away and I've no idea where they moved on to. Despite the swarm - it seems that the hive they left remains queenless. I've checked every five days since I discovered they'd swarmed and no eggs, larvae or brood is there but they have one super of honey which is eight frames full but no frame is entirely capped. Meanwhile my second hive which had been empty has attracted a swarm within the last three weeks and the queen has started laying - I can see eggs, larvae and capped brood, but they obviously have very few stores. I'm assuming they can't have swarmed from my first hive as the timings didn't match. So my questions are: 1) given how late it is in the season, do I start feeding the second hive now in order to give it the best chance of building up stores enough to survive the winter and 2) is it too late in the season to risk taking a frame of eggs/larvae/brood from this second hive and putting it into the first hive and seeing whether they will raise a queen with a view to keeping this original colony going too? Help!

 

[terry jones]

Assuming you are -Q in your first hive combining would appear the best route.

 

[meidel]

Before combining it's always a good idea to put in a test frame of eggs - if the bees make queen cells they are truly Q- and after knocking down the queen cells they should be ok to combine without risking the queen. If however they don't build queen cells, you need to find the rogue queen ...

 

[oliver90owner]

Do the test frame and if it proves Q- you have two choices - unite or buy in a queen, IMO.

Bearing in mind the bees are all old, I would introduce any bought-in queen to a small nuc of house bees first as that may be safer than 'risking hard' cash direct into a colony of old bees only. Some on here (a bee inspector, being one) disagree with that, but that is what I would do if my queen resources were limited.

You have enough stores aqt the moment, between the to colonies - a decision of what to do about the queen will likely resolve the stores issue.

RAB

 

[VEG]

what sort of been's do you have?

 

[lancee]

Has beens ? (or had beens?)

 

[beeno]

Hi Sarah28,
Sorry to hear that the swarmed colony ended up Q- which is not surprising considering the weather. I would feed swarm until 5-7 frames of brood bearing in mind your situation. The one thing you do not have to worry about is winter stores. This can be corrected in 7-10 days in Sept. by feeding Ambrosia. Lots of luck with the rest.