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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #7523  by Steve 1972
 01 Jun 2020, 12:18
Too much to mention but nothing is going to plan this year..every single hive has lost there original clipped Queens.. four of which are from a none swarming strain..i have managed to save three 2019 Queens and place them in nucs which they are filling with eggs and stores fairly quickly and soon to be put into a full size brood box ready for a unite to the colonies i do not like once i dispatch there Queens..

Anyway a short round up of what i have done over the weekend..
I went to the hives on Saturday to remove supers for extraction and by the time i had finished faffing on knocking Queen cells down and looking for Virgins i ran out of time and only managed to get six supers of and extracted..
So i had to go back at the bees yesterday but i went a lot earlier and just as well..bedlam is a understatement..two hives had swarmed with virgins just before i got there one swarm flew past me and into the woods..they are of no harm to the public so i just left them too it.. first hive i opened i spotted a very dark virgin and two open Queen cells and a third still capped..i removed the capped one and opened it up and sure enough another virgin ready to emerge so she got my welly ..i went through all the other colonies meticulously with a fine tooth come and knocked everything down to one Queen cell..i lost count of the amount i knocked down and many of them had ready to emerge virgins in them...i ended up releasing three onto the comb of three colonies and by the time i was done i ended up removing another ten supers which i will extract today..
Hopefully every thing starts leveling out soon so i can concentrate more time on the supers rather than rooting through every frame of every brood box each time i am at the bees..
 #7535  by Patrick
 01 Jun 2020, 22:45
NigelP wrote:
On a more positive note, Snelgrove method 2 is sheer genius. All queen cells torn down in upper brood box....alas operator error meant loads of queen cells in lower box (should only be sealed brood in lower box)....so leave for another week before adding queen back downstairs.
As I am sure you know, putting some eggs in the bottom box and letting them raise emergency cells (which after you have left a bit you tear down prior to reinstalling the Queen) is the modification of Snelgrove 2 that Wally Shaw advocates, and which I now use as standard. I don’t know why the raising then destruction of the emergency cells seems to switch off the swarming urge in the downstairs part, but it reliably does.

I did several this year and in all cases the top half have raised a new mated Queen and the lower half has the old queen happily laying like a train. I was hurrying on one hive and simply put queen in lower half and brood and a foiled queen cell in upper a la a vertical Pagden. And as per usual, top half raised a new Queen and bottom part tried to swarm again (but I only physically lost the clipped queen). Reduced bottom part to a single cell and now waiting for that to come into lay also.

I keep on forgetting how rubbish conventional Pagden is. And yet every year it is parroted out on poor beginners. A small tweak a la Snelgrove and you something that actually works.
 #7540  by NigelP
 02 Jun 2020, 09:02
Snelgrove method 2 recommends no eggs or young larvae in bottom box, which (as I constantly find) is almost impossible in practice if you are already running double brood hives. Easier if single brood and you can add "clean" frames . Whilst I'm not sure why wally recommends giving them eggs so they can produce queen cells, they do lose the impulse to swarm after a couple of weeks (usually). Reason (in my head) is the "older" scout bees that are major players in the swarming process have now died out. Going to try a small tweak on Snelgrove method 2 and instead of replacing queen into bottom box I'm going to unite both boxes so they don't raise another queen and see if that has cured it but after 2 weeks not the 1 week as recommended by Snelgrove....and also after checking for any more queen cells in bottom box.
 #7547  by Patrick
 02 Jun 2020, 12:02
Yes I agree Nigel - most of my beekeeping is done in the evening as the light is going behind the trees and being “certain” there are no eggs in any frame is nigh impossible, hence making a virtue out of a necessity and doing the delay to move Queenie down and waiting for them to raise any Queen cells (which get knocked down after sealing) before moving her back.

In all these artificial swarm style splits, having empty drawn combs (even if only a couple) for the queen to get on with laying up also makes such a difference. A box of foundation just seems to lead to them trying to leg it on the first available eggs they get. Really annoying!
 #7552  by Steve 1972
 02 Jun 2020, 18:49
Patrick wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 12:02
Yes I agree Nigel - most of my beekeeping is done in the evening as the light is going behind the trees and being “certain” there are no eggs in any frame is nigh impossible,
Hello Patrick .. i sometimes struggle to see eggs and the best method i have found is to use a little LED torch as they produce no heat..however do not use a black one as the bees will hammer it..
 #7612  by Japey Edge
 04 Jun 2020, 23:27
Nuc and queenright-and-lightweight hive moved today. Clearer boards under heavy supers on the other two. That should take some weight out!
Not too fussed about taking the honey and leaving them light for the move. Once the move is done I can feed them back a bucket of honey no problem! Hopefully they'll leave the flakes in the feeder...
 #7621  by NigelP
 05 Jun 2020, 09:10
Jazz before you feed it back to the bees might be worth investing £6 in a 200 micron bucket filter....
https://tinyurl.com/yagsrpk2
Warm, honey to 45C and run through. Set OSR honey though requires 50C overnight. It's my standard method before bottling the stuff. It's surprising the amount of small wax and debris that still goes through the stainless steel mesh filters.
 #7650  by Steve 1972
 06 Jun 2020, 19:37
Hived two of three six frame Nucs into brood boxes today as they where bursting with bees and no room for the Queens to lay..these nucs where a result of an artificial swarm a few weeks ago..i dummied the brood boxes down to eight frames and will ad more if need be next week in preparation to unite them back to a full colony each once i find and remove the virgins..the third nuc is still too small so i will leave them too it for now..
The weather was rubbish today to do anything else..
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