New Queen Emerged, No Space To Lay ?

Friar Tuck · Jul 21, 2010

Did an AS, Nuc hive all good laying well. Growing fast.

QC has now opened and queen hopefully emerged.

The problem is the, where the bees were going to swam they filled the brood chamber with nectar, leaving the old queen no room to lay, thus thinning her down so she could fly. The bees then suck up all the nectar and off they go. new queen emerges and she has room to lay...

But I did an AS. thus taking the queen out with some frames of bee's but now i have a brood box full of uncapped nectar. The new Queen will hopefully mate with in the next week or so. But where will she lay?

Thanks for your help

Roy S · Jul 21, 2010

Are there enough supers if any at all on the hive with the brood box full of nectar? if not put one on, preferably drawn if you've got it. Once the new queen is out and about they will soon move the nectar up to allow her space to lay (if they've got space to move it too that is!). It sounds like they've not had enough room for the amount of forage coming in... hence swarming

Friar Tuck · Jul 21, 2010

Yeah they did not have enough space, hence the swam,, but now i have 2 supers on one full and mostly capped one been on 2 weeks drawing out nicely.

So the answer is the bee's will just move the nectar up.

Good Good Chears :bigear:

Rosti · Jul 21, 2010

Friar Tuck said:
So the answer is the bee's will just move the nectar up.

FT, 'bruise' the frames you want stores to be moved from with your hive tool (or drag a de-capping fork over the cappings to damage them) to give the girls a nudge in the right direction. I would leave the two outer frames alone though - as trad stores locations

Friar Tuck · Jul 21, 2010

The brood stores are not capped they have just put nectar in the cells and left them open !!! ? :cheers2:

Roy S · Jul 21, 2010

Bruising the stores only applies to capped honey...in this case you dont need to bother, just make sure they've got more than enough space to move it up into.