Juststarting
House Bee
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2009
- Messages
- 293
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- North Derbyshire
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 4 hives, 1 nuc
I had a productive established double brood hive (national) that is queen less - swarmed after I had removed single sealed qc (missed in inspection 5 days before as it had been drawn on workers cell on a frame amongst drone brood - is there a way to spot these prior to them being significanly drawn/sealed?) and demarreed. Queen was still present when demarreed then swarmed (28/5).
I caught and hived swarm (I am pretty sure this was a prime swarm not caste as no other qcs in hive) but there does not seem to be a laying queen with swarm checked (yesterday)- I either missed her or she was damaged. test frame now in hive. I had hoped to reunite with original hive once settled and laying.
Rather than letting main hive raise queen and be without a laying queen for most of my short season and I want to introduce queen from another, much smaller hive so bigger hive would still able to produce a harvest
My plan - was to combine using newspaper on site of q- hive :floor, double brood from q- hive, paper, brood q+ hive, paper, supers from q- hive.
On site of original q+ hive I was going to put swarm with test frame to make new queen if queenless or if they havent drawn out qcs, wait to see if vigin and comes into lay, or find non laying queen and then add another frame of eggs for them to raise new queen. I was planning to put supers from original q+ hive on top. Do I need newspaper or will they be okay without?
All hives are next to each other.
Results of plan - I hope:
Large productive q+ hive, small q- hive raising new queen.
Downside : q intro doesnt work, two q- hives.
Would you do things differently? If so how and why?
I caught and hived swarm (I am pretty sure this was a prime swarm not caste as no other qcs in hive) but there does not seem to be a laying queen with swarm checked (yesterday)- I either missed her or she was damaged. test frame now in hive. I had hoped to reunite with original hive once settled and laying.
Rather than letting main hive raise queen and be without a laying queen for most of my short season and I want to introduce queen from another, much smaller hive so bigger hive would still able to produce a harvest
My plan - was to combine using newspaper on site of q- hive :floor, double brood from q- hive, paper, brood q+ hive, paper, supers from q- hive.
On site of original q+ hive I was going to put swarm with test frame to make new queen if queenless or if they havent drawn out qcs, wait to see if vigin and comes into lay, or find non laying queen and then add another frame of eggs for them to raise new queen. I was planning to put supers from original q+ hive on top. Do I need newspaper or will they be okay without?
All hives are next to each other.
Results of plan - I hope:
Large productive q+ hive, small q- hive raising new queen.
Downside : q intro doesnt work, two q- hives.
Would you do things differently? If so how and why?
