ksjs
House Bee
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2011
- Messages
- 195
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- North Wales
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 3
OK, mid manipulation (quite a stressful one) it dawned on me that my great plan wasn't so great. Essentially I wanted to add a sealed QC to a hive which is producing queen cells in an effort to avoid swarming.
Process was as follows:
1. Locate queen in hive 1 and put her, some bees and some stores in a nuc.
2. Cull the 2 unsealed queen cells I had left in this hive during my inspection on Monday. I subsequently decided I don't want these as the mother isn't proving to be the best.
3. Locate 1 of the 2 sealed queen cells (I 'know' these are OK as I saw them when they were unsealed) in hive 2 (which just recently swarmed) and transfer this to hive 1.
I did all that and then realised that as I'd just removed the queen from hive 1 there would be eggs such that emergency QC can be produced. The sealed QC I have just transferred is due to hatch during next few days (it was unsealed last Wed and I reckon it was between 4 and 7 days old at that point - the reason for lack of uncertainty on age is that of the 2 unsealed QC that I selected 1 was a bit older and 1 was a bit younger but I didn't note which was which). The earliest it can hatch is therefore tomorrow but I reckon it will be a few days yet.
I want to stop them producing emergency QC so I need to inspect yet I don't want to upset the hatching / mating of the queen I have transferred. What are my options? What are the likely scenarios if I do nothing i.e. they get a new virgin in a few days and they don't currently have a queen, meanwhile they've been producing emergency QC?
I know I've made a mistake here and got a bit ahead of myself so go easy please...
Process was as follows:
1. Locate queen in hive 1 and put her, some bees and some stores in a nuc.
2. Cull the 2 unsealed queen cells I had left in this hive during my inspection on Monday. I subsequently decided I don't want these as the mother isn't proving to be the best.
3. Locate 1 of the 2 sealed queen cells (I 'know' these are OK as I saw them when they were unsealed) in hive 2 (which just recently swarmed) and transfer this to hive 1.
I did all that and then realised that as I'd just removed the queen from hive 1 there would be eggs such that emergency QC can be produced. The sealed QC I have just transferred is due to hatch during next few days (it was unsealed last Wed and I reckon it was between 4 and 7 days old at that point - the reason for lack of uncertainty on age is that of the 2 unsealed QC that I selected 1 was a bit older and 1 was a bit younger but I didn't note which was which). The earliest it can hatch is therefore tomorrow but I reckon it will be a few days yet.
I want to stop them producing emergency QC so I need to inspect yet I don't want to upset the hatching / mating of the queen I have transferred. What are my options? What are the likely scenarios if I do nothing i.e. they get a new virgin in a few days and they don't currently have a queen, meanwhile they've been producing emergency QC?
I know I've made a mistake here and got a bit ahead of myself so go easy please...