jdee
New Bee
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2011
- Messages
- 68
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Co Mayo
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 4
Question time again folks
I united a strong queenless hive with a weak queen right hive (queen wasnt laying huge amounts but as this was a weak swarm capture it was too be expected). I placed the queen right hive on the bottom of the combined hives (there was and is only 5 frames that are being used – the rest was undrawn foundation). Anyway things have been going along fine for the last two weeks and I opened the hive up to discover three capped queen cells and still 5 frames of drawn foundation with no new eggs and small amounts of capped brood the rest of the hive is stores (including 10 frames of stores in the upstairs brood box).
I can only surmise that the original queen was a scrub queen that came with the swarm and the strong queenless hive rejected her and have made up these new queen cells. I am also guessing that it is now too late in the season to get a successfully matted queen from the hive (there are still drones present in this and my other two hives).
My other question is will there be any issues with moving some of the full frames of stores down to the bottom brood box. There are a heck of a lot of bees and they are still bring in larges amounts of pollen at the moment – seems this part of Ireland is a good month behind the rest of Ireland.
Any thoughts please
Rgds
JD
I united a strong queenless hive with a weak queen right hive (queen wasnt laying huge amounts but as this was a weak swarm capture it was too be expected). I placed the queen right hive on the bottom of the combined hives (there was and is only 5 frames that are being used – the rest was undrawn foundation). Anyway things have been going along fine for the last two weeks and I opened the hive up to discover three capped queen cells and still 5 frames of drawn foundation with no new eggs and small amounts of capped brood the rest of the hive is stores (including 10 frames of stores in the upstairs brood box).
I can only surmise that the original queen was a scrub queen that came with the swarm and the strong queenless hive rejected her and have made up these new queen cells. I am also guessing that it is now too late in the season to get a successfully matted queen from the hive (there are still drones present in this and my other two hives).
My other question is will there be any issues with moving some of the full frames of stores down to the bottom brood box. There are a heck of a lot of bees and they are still bring in larges amounts of pollen at the moment – seems this part of Ireland is a good month behind the rest of Ireland.
Any thoughts please
Rgds
JD