Weak colony

[fruitloop0709]

Hi all,

I have a colony that I bought as any a year ago. They are very small, the Queen was laying in a good pattern last year but only on a couple of frames. Out of 11 frames in the brood box they have only 8 drawn! As a beginner I didn't really know how long this should take. I fed them for a few weeks last spring, then heavier Syrup in autumn. Then in December I put on fondant.

They survived the winter but do not seem to be building up further this year either. This week I have inspected and found one frame has one capped brood cell on it and nothing else, and another had about 10 and nothing else! There are also two frames with a more normal amount of eggs and brood.

There was a charged queen cell a couple of weeks ago that I left thinking supersedure was happening but that has completely gone, I presume they have dismantled it.

I now have another colony that were an over wintered nuc. They are bursting at the seems and busy filling a super. They have 9 frames of brood. I presume this colony is normal?

There are no obvious signs of disease that my beginner eyes can see other than this at slow rate of production.

 

[enrico]

It is clearly a poor queen and that is why they are trying to replace her. I would be tempted to destroy all the queen cells in there and put a frame of eggs from you really good colony in there. In the centre of the frame, under cells with eggs in scrape back the comb to the foundation about 2cm square. That is where they will build the queen cells. That way you are getting the genes from a good queen at the least.
Make sure no other queen cells are built. I would even consider moving the old queen out if she is not laying.
Difficult to say exactly what to do without seeing them.
Or of course you could just let nature take its course but....
E

 

[Bakerbee]

I just had the same situation in one of my hives. I gave her 2 inspections grace to get going but she never did. I pinched her out and introduced a q from an artificial swarm which has been a great success. Get some new genetics into that hive i reckon, either by a frame of eggs from a strong hive( fingers crossed it mates with a nice drone) or buying a new queen. If i was going to do the egg/frame method, i would take the queen and leave them 5 days, go back in knock back all eqc and then give the new frame of eggs. Lots of ways to do it. Let us know how you get on, good luck.

 

[fruitloop0709]

Thank you both. I think I'll give a frame of eggs and do the scraping thing, unfortunately I've only ever seen her since she's quite elusive! If I can find her I'll remove her.

 

[Swarm]

….