emoclewbee
New Bee
Hey all, I am in my second year of beekeeping, in the south west of Ireland.
I have three hives and one of my goals for this year was to may increase from my own hives. I tried to do a spilt to make increase, the bees made queencells in the queenless box as planned but the Queen has stopped laying in the other box, and I am wondering if anyone knows why?
I am wondering if it is to do with how I did the manipulation ?
I decided to do a vertical spilt using a spilt board with the aim of taking a couple of nucs containing queencells off the queenless box, and leaving some queencells to get get a new virgin queen in one box, to spilt off once she is laying. leaving the old queen in situ.
I use national hives on double broods
Last week I decided to start the spilt but I couldn't find the queen, though I knew they were queenright. I decided to plough on and shook the bees from both brood boxes into the bottom brood box, and assumed it likely contained the queen after that. I put the spilt board on top of the bottom brood box, with the persumed queenless box on top and then supers. All frames containing eggs and larvae were put in the top box. The remaining sealed brood frames I spilt between both boxes. I had planned to do it with the queenless box on the bottom with supers on top and queenright box on top but couldn't after not being able to find the queen.
I returned today (6 days later) and 4 frames in the top box had queencells, 2 of them were capped cells, all other had royal jelly in them. So I made two nucs from these with stores and some capped brood. and left a frame with queen cells on it and filled the box with drawn comb. So far so good I thought.
When I got to the bottom box I saw the queen (2021 queen marked) but there was no eggs or larvae in the box. Only the capped and emerging brood I left last week.
I am wondering if she has stopped laying in preparation to swarm? Is this a result of having the two brood boxes on top each other with only the board between?
Any insight or advice would be appreciated
I have three hives and one of my goals for this year was to may increase from my own hives. I tried to do a spilt to make increase, the bees made queencells in the queenless box as planned but the Queen has stopped laying in the other box, and I am wondering if anyone knows why?
I am wondering if it is to do with how I did the manipulation ?
I decided to do a vertical spilt using a spilt board with the aim of taking a couple of nucs containing queencells off the queenless box, and leaving some queencells to get get a new virgin queen in one box, to spilt off once she is laying. leaving the old queen in situ.
I use national hives on double broods
Last week I decided to start the spilt but I couldn't find the queen, though I knew they were queenright. I decided to plough on and shook the bees from both brood boxes into the bottom brood box, and assumed it likely contained the queen after that. I put the spilt board on top of the bottom brood box, with the persumed queenless box on top and then supers. All frames containing eggs and larvae were put in the top box. The remaining sealed brood frames I spilt between both boxes. I had planned to do it with the queenless box on the bottom with supers on top and queenright box on top but couldn't after not being able to find the queen.
I returned today (6 days later) and 4 frames in the top box had queencells, 2 of them were capped cells, all other had royal jelly in them. So I made two nucs from these with stores and some capped brood. and left a frame with queen cells on it and filled the box with drawn comb. So far so good I thought.
When I got to the bottom box I saw the queen (2021 queen marked) but there was no eggs or larvae in the box. Only the capped and emerging brood I left last week.
I am wondering if she has stopped laying in preparation to swarm? Is this a result of having the two brood boxes on top each other with only the board between?
Any insight or advice would be appreciated
