RogerJ
New Bee
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2015
- Messages
- 68
- Reaction score
- 5
- Location
- Herefordshire
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 5
I have a single hive (but wish to expand) - it has been slow to build up after what seemed a good start - possibly due to the odd Spring weather we've been having (or that's what I assumed as there were no signs of other problems). Inspected a week ago and very low on stores so gave then some 1:1 syrup - also did not see any queen cells. Could not see eggs or queen (but often have difficulty with that) but there was very young brood.
Inspected again yesterday - taken all the syrup and there were two queen cells - one sealed and one unsealed (so presumably I missed them the previous week - not sure how but there we go!). No evidence of having swarmed in terms of number of bees compared with previous and again there was very young brood. But there were minimal drone cells and I couldn't see any drones in the hive.
I did the first step of the Wally Shaw Modified Snelgrove II (and keeping fingers crossed that they hadn't swarmed). So my question is that if the next steps in this method are followed (and bearing in mind that I would like to increase) and if there are no drones how likely is it that a virgin queen would mate?
Inspected again yesterday - taken all the syrup and there were two queen cells - one sealed and one unsealed (so presumably I missed them the previous week - not sure how but there we go!). No evidence of having swarmed in terms of number of bees compared with previous and again there was very young brood. But there were minimal drone cells and I couldn't see any drones in the hive.
I did the first step of the Wally Shaw Modified Snelgrove II (and keeping fingers crossed that they hadn't swarmed). So my question is that if the next steps in this method are followed (and bearing in mind that I would like to increase) and if there are no drones how likely is it that a virgin queen would mate?