BBKA Forum

NigelP wrote: ↑

23 May 2019, 21:27

With the later.... decided to be different ...destroyed queen cells (at least the ones I could find...they can be a bugger to find) and have queen in upper brood box with QX between them and lower.....see if they draw more as now added extra space.

Nigel, I have done something similar in the past and the bees stopped building queen cells, the queen kept laying and was still heading the colony the following spring. Good luck.

I've also lost a couple of queens with no evidence of a queen cell having existed.

Beekeeping friend has been out to at least one if not two swarms every day for past 2 weeks. Apparently a lot have been small in size with virgin queens and have been hanging in one location for several days before they were called to collect, one off a small twig and another on a fence rail had both built wild comb. Wouldn't normally expect this, makes us wonder why they're not finding a suitable home.

Thanks for your empathy Nigel - you may have a point! I think many of us get a bit over extended this time of year.

The issues described cover some of my comment about a “mixed bag” in my own apiary. I have had so far a quite poor proportion of mated queens from emerged cells, despite what to me seems reasonable flying weather.

By contrast I am not at all surprised by the amount of swarm attempts. Last year had to be the lowest incidence of swarming attempts I can remember over the last twenty years, so many colonies are / were probably headed by queens in their third summer.

@Caroline, a mate of mine has picked a couple of swarms up this last week and same thing, very small indeed,

I suspect the on-off weather is causing a lot of colonies to continue to cast out successively smaller batches of bees.

Maybe last years low swarming incidence also made some folk a bit more relaxed this year than normal?

I would agree Patrick. I've lost two already, one I wasn't surprised at as I knew it was strong and I didn't get out to it in time. The other other was quite early and caught me off guard.

Adding boxes to colonies. This year I've got a colony in a woodland and to say I'm impressed is an understatement, it's coming on grand.

I carried out my first inspection since transferring a 6 frame nuc to a full hive.

Photos of inspection are on my One Drive - https://1drv.ms/f/s!Av81dIXQWFUjnAspnVPw0vMTAUas

Was impressed with how they have drawn out most of the foundation I gave them. I took off the 1:1 syrup because they have so many stores.

I did add a super but now I know that wasn't the best of moves (thanks Nigel) and I'll be taking that off today, while I take down a QC we spotted

Yesterday evening, I marked my first couple of 2019 queens as the weather has been warm enough over the past week for them to mate. Yay! I am looking forward to seeing some more over the next week or so as I go around checking them. Usually it's small colonies first; queens tend to take longer to start to lay in larger colonies. (Completely the opposite of what is in Yates study notes!).

Meanwhile an email this morning from Norfolk beekeepers said that they are struggling to keep up with swarm collection.

Took down an empty sealed queen cell and two cups.

Empty sealed queen cell?