No space to lay

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Red Bee

House Bee
Joined
Dec 11, 2008
Messages
233
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Location
Cornwall
Hive Type
14x12
Hello

Need some advice please, I have a colony which was the Q- part of an A/S & left with a Q cell to produce a new Q. After 3-4 weeks no new Q, I happened to have another Q cell from another colony which I transplanted into this Q- colony. Again nothing happened so bought a Q which they have taken to. Now my problem is after all these weeks Q- they have jammed the brood frames with honey & pollen. The Q has been in for about two weeks with no sign of the stores being moved, so minimal space for Q to lay. What I have done so far is take two frames out stuffed with stores & spun them out in the extracter, to be placed back in the hive for the Q to lay in. With winter coming I'm worried about there not being enough space to create bees for winter. I was thinking about putting a drawn super on the B/B for the Q to get going on with. Any other ideas??

Thanks.
 
More experienced voices will put me right, but, I wouldn't have thought you wanted her laying in a super. I think the standard advice would be to put a super on then bruise the stores so they move them up; but I quite like your idea of extracting. You could then feed it back to them in a month or so when it's time to feed them up for winter.

Be interested to see what real beeks think though.
 
More experienced voices will put me right, but, I wouldn't have thought you wanted her laying in a super. I think the standard advice would be to put a super on then bruise the stores so they move them up; but I quite like your idea of extracting. You could then feed it back to them in a month or so when it's time to feed them up for winter.

Be interested to see what real beeks think though.
I thought that good advice , what about looking at your other hives and maybe swap a couple of frames as I think you have 5
Grub
 
Not that experienced myself but my queen stopped laying for a while the workers filled the space with stores she had little space left to lay when she got round to it. More experience beek said to decap or score a frame of stores and put in the centre of the hive. They'll clear this - into the super if you have one drawn out thus giving her space to lay. Or like you say - you can extract a frame or two and put them back to be cleaned ready for her to lay. I wouldn't have her laying in a super.
 
I was thinking of using a super for the Q too lay in & once she had filled it full of brood place a Q excluder back on. With the Q being put back in the B/B all the emerging new bees would go down into the B/B then take super off for winter or something like that.
 
More experienced voices will put me right, but, I wouldn't have thought you wanted her laying in a super. I think the standard advice would be to put a super on then bruise the stores so they move them up; but I quite like your idea of extracting. You could then feed it back to them in a month or so when it's time to feed them up for winter.

Be interested to see what real beeks think though.

Firstly Skyhook, you are a "real beekeeper", all of us who look after bees are in fact beekeepers, Years of experience and large quantities of hives bears little to the quality of ones beekeeping, I have known useless beekeepers which have kept (just) bees for many years and on the other hand, modern new Beeks which do a smashing job with only a few hives.

Back to the question, for me, the most reliable method of freeing up brood comb is to extract a few frames, either keep it for myself if capped and the hive is full or feed it back to the bees if uncapped, a couple of weeks later, as its honey the bees store it straight away, you can bruse/scratch the cappings but at this time of year they might just cap it again, even more so if they have nowhere else to store it.

Enzo.
 
Hello

With winter coming I'm worried about there not being enough space to create bees for winter.
There are a number of limiting factors that affect the amount of brood. Space is one of them, available stores another and amount of bees available to rear the brood another. In your case I wonder if you are hoping for too much. At this time of year the queen's laying slows down, and in any colony if there are not enogh young house bees to rear them, less brood will be reared. It sounds as if there have been some weeks previously with few new bees. No new bees means fewer bees available to tend the brood.

You could add newly emerging brood if you have any. If you cannot add house bees via newly emerging brood, I think you may need to expect less.
 

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