This is my apiary in July. It has never been in such a disarray!! Anyway, here goes. Starting from the right.
You can see the 2 nucs that we set up to get 2 new queens from Sth. N'land mated with my drones - fairly black stock. The nuc. on the right has hatched and mated a Q. and she is laying well. In fact, eggs/larvae/sealed brood on 4 combs. Yes they're nearly out of space. The "owner" doesn't want them yet. So...........
it looks as if the 2nd nuc. has a drone layer or a laying worker.
What do you think? Compared tothis comb on the right from the R. hand nuc. Not looking good. So I swapped a comb of brood from the R. with an empty comb from the left.
Shook the bees off of course.
I'll keep an eye on them both - if the L. nuc. starts to make Q. cells on their gifted comb I'll know they haven't got a fertile Q. That should put it right!
The R.hand hive - well the 2011 Q. had stopped laying - so now she's (sadly) in the freezer. I decided to set up a nuc. with a Q. cell the colony had built and combine the rest, through newspaper, with the middle hive you can see above (5 lifts high). It's a small colony but doing fine - I'm feeding them 1:1 syrup.
The L.hand hive is the artificial swarm hive split from the White colony. The Red-marked (2013) Q. is laying very well and the bees are drawing out foundation and filling the 2 supers - just as they would if they had swarmed naturally.
The White hive had the brood and the nurse bees and a good Q. cell. The Q. cell has hatched but the Q isn't laying yet - a tense time now waiting to see if she has successfully mated. Close them up and be patient.
The tallest hive at the back is empty waiting for a new colony when a nuc. outgrows its 5 combs.
The swarm hive from A-Bee (back left) is thriving. I have stopped feeding and have given them a Super above the QX. This colony behaves very oddly - thousands emerging and fling around each time I open them up. Not agressive but certainly makes for a very quick inspection.
Whew!!! Well that's it for now - till next inspection in 7/8 days'time. Happy buzzing - let me know what you think! QBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I had that same issue with one of my hives where the queen died and there was a laying worker. That frame definitely looks like drone cells! We tried swapping out brood frames to the empty queen hive but everytime a Queen was born, the hive didn't take to her so we ended up combining a Nuc with the Queenless hive. They are doing well now. Why do you put the dead queen in the freezer? Do you use her to create a swarm lure?
ReplyDeleteHere's my recent post about us trying to raise a Queen
http://nycgardening.blogspot.com/2014/05/raising-another-queen.html
Hi Mimi - thanks for sharing your experience.
DeleteIncidentally, the Q wasn't dead when I put her in the freezer.
It's just a more gentle way than squashing her. I feel some loyalty
towards my old Queens.
QB