my first Artificial Swarm

[taff..]

Last week I realised that I had left it alteast a week late for putting a super on and they had built quite a number of queen cups with eggs but no royal jelly, I broke them all down and added a super of foundation in the hope that that might be enough to satisfy them but happy that I could do an AS this week if needed.

I've spent a fair amount of time reading lots of stuff on AS'ing this week and I'm sure you'll all know just how much has been written on this subject with soooo many varying ideas of how it should be done.

fast forward to this week and no surprise that there were quite a number of queen cells with grubs (about 10-12 + empty cups) and one little surprise of a capped cell.

I found the queen and put the frame she was on in another brood box full of foundation by the side of the original and put the lid on it for now.

next I went through the hive with the aim of leaving just one QC, the one I chose to keep was the sealed one so I broke down the rest, I know I had a telling off last week for spending too much time in the hive but I took my time again and tried to make sure that I found every QC, when I was happy I put the roof back on and moved the hive complete to its new place 5 ft away.

Back to the Q+ brood box, I put it in the place of the original and then checked the frame with the queen on for any queen cells and destroyed them, I added a frame of stores from the original BB, closed them up and let them to get on with it.


my question is, lots of the reading I have done say's that all supers should go onto the Q+ colony, but, my super had some drawn foundation but not a great deal and virtually no stores hence why I put the frame of stores in with them, is there any value to feeding them now or just leave well alone, they'll bring in all the food they need?

 

[sputnam]

If there's a honey flow on they should be fine, otherwise I would feed - will help them to draw the foundation at least.
The reason for putting super on the AS are that, with only foundation in the BB & all the foraging bees, they will fill them fairly quickly.
The colony with the QC has no foraging bees & will eat stores & earn you nothing.

Incidentally, there's nothing wrong in spending time looking through your bees & learning. Might have some effect on honey production, but that's fine if you enjoy it.

Stephen.

 

[taff..]

Thanks Stephen, that makes sense.

your bees (or is that my bee's?) are lovely and calm and an absolute joy to be around.

This year is all about learning, if I get a couple of Lb off them this year then thats a bonus

 

[taff..]

<------------that's what I'm doing right now.

the plan was......

4 days after doing the AS I'd go back and check the brood part of the AS and make sure that there is only 1 capped QC, there were 2 but the one that wasn't my chosen one had a hole in the side so the bee's had started tearing it down themselves, happy days I closed up and will leave it for 3 weeks to give her a chance to get out and mated.

while I was there I thought I'd have a very quick peek into the swarm part of the AS to see if she's laying yet, first signs were'nt so good, not as many bee's as i was expecting, I pulled out the frame of brood and there's an almost sealed queen cell and no sign of the queen.

bugger, it seems the AS has swarmed anyway

I presume I must have missed the queen cell on friday

 

[MrTrueman]

Yep rule number 1 make 100% sure the queen right does not have any Queen Cells!

I was so unsure I even opened them up after the spilt just to double check and low and behold in the heat of the moment I had made a mistake a left one behind!

Not good to distrub them twice but I am glad I did!