Simple way to make a Nuc question

[Brigsy]

Cheers. That does seem the easiest option. And is the first mentioned in the Haynes book.

 

[taurus]

As a newbie I used the Wally Shaw method to start a new colony. The mistake I made was to thin out the emergency queen cells. Wally says not to do this as if they weren't in swarming mode beforehand they won't swarm once they've made emergency queen cells.

He says to leave it to the bees to decide which queen to keep. I didn't read that bit until too late so I thinned out the cells. The new queen mated and seemed to be going well but she obviously wasn't to their liking because they got rid of her late in August.

This year I'm going to follow his advice and leave the queen cells for them to sort out. Hopefully that might mean they keep the new queen and get a better run into the autumn.

I do find what Wally Shaw writes makes an awful lot of sense.

 

[Brigsy]

Haha, I and one other had the opposite experience last year. I didn't thin out as directed and had a large number of queens fighting/piping and chaos ensued. I ended up with no queen and laying workers.

My plan is to thin out this time! Beekeeping eh.

 

[Brigsy]

Although having re read your post mine were trying to swarm rather than being provoked into producing QC's.

 

[taurus]

Although having re read your post mine were trying to swarm rather than being provoked into producing QC's.

I think that's the bit I missed. If you're doing swarm control (ie reactive) then thinning is necessary. Wally's advice is that if the bees weren't trying to swarm but you've pre-empted a split, then they won't swarm even if there are multiple emergency queen cells. So leave them to pick the best queen.

It made me a bit sad because I saw the new queen one day and she looked fine to me - but a few days later she'd gone and they did a supercedure. Right at the end of August.

 

[Swarm]

There was a lot of talk about poorly mated queens last year.

 

[REDWOOD]

I had one last year, strange hive !! I found multiple emergency queen cells, left them to it and three weeks later queenless, not even a virgin. Introduced a new queen and all's fine again.

 

[Swarm]

That's the best method IMO, add a laying queen.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Of all Wally's methods I have experience only of his Modified Snelgrove, which a reactive method of swarm control.
I took a peek inside the re-queening box when the queens were due to emerge and was horrified to see at least 20 QCs on the point of popping and lots of virgin queens running around. Unsure what to do I just sprung the lot and closed up.
Wally and I corresponded at length over this and he was extremely helpful. He admitted he never looked into these boxes with new queens till weeks later and though it usually proved successful he didn't actually know what the bees were doing inside.
I agree with him that these bees are NOT thinking of swarming and should sort themselves out.
This is a really neat method so I vowed to do it again but to thin the QCs
I never did get a mated queen in that colony from the manoeuvres but I put that down to bad luck in virgin mating.
What I did get .......... one of the virgins escaping the chaos got into the hive next door and killed my LASI queen.

I have however decided NOT to interfere by thinning the QCs but to make sure that any colony re-queening itself is put well away from the other hives.

 

[Millet]

I had one last year, strange hive !! I found multiple emergency queen cells, left them to it and three weeks later queenless, not even a virgin. Introduced a new queen and all's fine again.

Last year on two separate occasions the good Queens cells i had chosen failed too emerge during swarm control, i am in two minds weather to leave two queen cells in each Nuc this year for insurance as the old girl will be 3yrs old come June.

 

[Cussword]

I had one last year, strange hive !! I found multiple emergency queen cells, left them to it and three weeks later queenless, not even a virgin. Introduced a new queen and all's fine again.

Me too, in more than one hive.