KitzTaz
New Bee
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2011
- Messages
- 24
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- North Cheshire
- Hive Type
- 14x12
- Number of Hives
- 4
OK, this is the story of the big gamble.
On the 2nd of May we went up to our one and only hive, and having seen plenty of drones and knowing that the fourth coming weather looked promising, we decided to make a split, so to increase our numbers. We where told by our mentor and other bee-keeping friends that this was TOO SOON, and tutted and sighed and shook their heads.However, we still did the split.
Fast forward four weeks, the Old Queen was still laying like a trooper and low and behold in the split hive a New Queen had appeared! she was even Laying eggs! all this when we where told that it was too soon and could never happen!!
Now, our HIVES are 14x12, and most of the drawn out frames in the hives was standard nationals. We had no drawn out 14x12's at the time.So BOTH Queens where running out of space to lay and the girls, especially in the original hive (H1) seemed a bit slow on wanting to build wax (well, wax where we wanted them to build it)
Then Last week, OUR surprise in the split hive,(H2) the girls had drawn out several of the 14x12 frames and the Queen has been busy doing her thing! filled with Joy and Glee, (picture Wallace from Wallace and Gromit doing his Excited manouver - which probably looks weirder in Bee Suits) We opened up (H1) hoping to find the same, but only a few frames of 14x12 drawn out and a shed load of charged Queen Cells!!!
SOOOOO.. what to do, aside from envisaging our mentor with smug faces, we decided, that seeing as the Queen was Last year's queen, and that she could of been poorly mated after the beautiful summer we DID'NT have last year, we thought we would let this one go as they seemed to be poor wax builders and seeing that all the QC's where on the bottom of the frames (15 ish in total). With sad heart's we closed the hive up and wished them luck!
Today, imagine our surprise when we turned up at the Apiary and found ALL the bees still at home!.. opening up the hive revealed that all the bees had not swarmed after such a large number of charged queen cells. Imagine again our surprise when we found the Queen!! still laying, and all the Queen Cells torn down. The 14x12 frames nearly all drawn out. And a similar situation of drawn out frames is in the other hive too!
This being our second year, and under the illusion that second years are suppose to be difficult, everything SEEMS to be turning out Rosie. So having come to the conclusion that during a bad summer last year, the bees threw away the old books and rewrote new ones - they just haven't published them yet for us humans to read.!!
Off to trawl the internet now to see which publisher has picked up their contract for their new book!
P.S
they'll be foraging in December next ! watch this space!
On the 2nd of May we went up to our one and only hive, and having seen plenty of drones and knowing that the fourth coming weather looked promising, we decided to make a split, so to increase our numbers. We where told by our mentor and other bee-keeping friends that this was TOO SOON, and tutted and sighed and shook their heads.However, we still did the split.
Fast forward four weeks, the Old Queen was still laying like a trooper and low and behold in the split hive a New Queen had appeared! she was even Laying eggs! all this when we where told that it was too soon and could never happen!!
Now, our HIVES are 14x12, and most of the drawn out frames in the hives was standard nationals. We had no drawn out 14x12's at the time.So BOTH Queens where running out of space to lay and the girls, especially in the original hive (H1) seemed a bit slow on wanting to build wax (well, wax where we wanted them to build it)
Then Last week, OUR surprise in the split hive,(H2) the girls had drawn out several of the 14x12 frames and the Queen has been busy doing her thing! filled with Joy and Glee, (picture Wallace from Wallace and Gromit doing his Excited manouver - which probably looks weirder in Bee Suits) We opened up (H1) hoping to find the same, but only a few frames of 14x12 drawn out and a shed load of charged Queen Cells!!!
SOOOOO.. what to do, aside from envisaging our mentor with smug faces, we decided, that seeing as the Queen was Last year's queen, and that she could of been poorly mated after the beautiful summer we DID'NT have last year, we thought we would let this one go as they seemed to be poor wax builders and seeing that all the QC's where on the bottom of the frames (15 ish in total). With sad heart's we closed the hive up and wished them luck!
Today, imagine our surprise when we turned up at the Apiary and found ALL the bees still at home!.. opening up the hive revealed that all the bees had not swarmed after such a large number of charged queen cells. Imagine again our surprise when we found the Queen!! still laying, and all the Queen Cells torn down. The 14x12 frames nearly all drawn out. And a similar situation of drawn out frames is in the other hive too!
This being our second year, and under the illusion that second years are suppose to be difficult, everything SEEMS to be turning out Rosie. So having come to the conclusion that during a bad summer last year, the bees threw away the old books and rewrote new ones - they just haven't published them yet for us humans to read.!!
Off to trawl the internet now to see which publisher has picked up their contract for their new book!
P.S
they'll be foraging in December next ! watch this space!
