Comments on: Hive Inspection Number 2 – Queen Cells in Leri!

By: Alan

Alan — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:03:39 +0000

Hi Iain,
Thanks for your comments and good luck with your bees… We’ve actually had quite a lot happen since this post (check the beekeeping category here to see any updates: https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/category/beekeeping/)

However, in summary, after the first swarm from this hive, we’ve since had another 3 swarms I think, two of which we caught and re-housed. We also performed an artificial swarm on a hive as well so at one point had four colonies in the garden.

We usually inspect the hives once a week, but were away one week and had to miss out on an inspection, during which time we had another swarm leave from a small colony in a nuc box which essentially spelt the end for this colony.

We have however raised three new queens and they all were mated and laying. So, at the moment we have three colonies all with laying queens and are starting to try to get them ready for the winter by feeding them so that they can build up some stores – we aren’t in the best of places as far as suitable forage goes.

We’re not really experienced enough to offer advice, but if I were you I would have destroyed a couple of the queen cells, leaving just one or two in the hive. More than that and you run the risk of cast swarms once the new queens emerge. It sounds to me as though your bees have swarmed, rather than there being a problem with the queen. I guess transportation could lead to problems, but it depends how long they were kept in for. Ours were only transported for half an hour or so and then put straight into a hive at night so I doubt that would lead to any issues with Nosema infection.

It also sounds as though it’s getting quite late in the year for you. If you don’t have a queenright colony at the moment it’ll take a couple of weeks for the queen to hatch and mate and then another 2-3 weeks before she’s laying and new bees are emerging. During this time there could be very few flying bees and therefore no new stores coming into the hive. It might therefore be a good idea to start feeding them (if you aren’t already doing so). The bees will not only need food to keep them going at the moment, but should be building up suitable stores to get them through the winter.

I hope it all goes well and we have a couple of weeks of bee-friendly weather.
Let us know how it goes.

Al.

By: Iain

Iain — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 10:44:06 +0000

Alan,
My wife and I are also novice beekeepers, started with a nuc in June from a local Derbyshire beekeeper whose beginners course we had both been on. So local bees, from a good, well known and hugely experienced beekeeper. We had eggs, larvae and sealed brood on 3 frames, 2 frames of stores and a marked queen, in June.
We now have supersedure queen cells, no eggs or larvae and only sealed brood. We cannot find our marked queen. Our mentor thinks there was something wrong with the queen, and looking at posts on the bbka forum, this is not an unusual occurence this year. There seem to be 2 explantions – one is that it was a poor mating season in the spring, the other is that stress from keeping the bees in for transporation leads to high levels of Nosema infection, both leading the colony to replace the queen.
Like you, we have left the 4 cells, put the roof on, and hope the bees know a lot more about how to manage themselves than we do. We shall inspect with our mentor at the end of the month, to see if we are queenright again and possibly to mark the queen if we have one and we can find her. Hope all goes well for you – at least you have 2 hives, we have only 1, so might have to start again next season!
Iain

By: Alan

Alan — Sun, 15 May 2011 16:15:08 +0000

We did think about taking the easy route and assuming that it was a supersedure so that we could do nothing but after a chat with some other local beekeepers here we’ve come up with another plan.

As soon as there is a break in the weather (it’s currently pouring with rain, blowing a gale and only about 8Â°C), we are going to move the frames with the queen cells on into a nuc box along with some empty frames.

If they are swarm cells then we will hopefully therefore prevent them from swarming as we will have removed the queen cells and in effect given them even more room in the hive. We’ll also have a second nuc which will in a few weeks have a new queen in it. We can either create a new colony from this or combine them with a weak colony later in the year.

If they are supersedure cells (due to a failing queen in the colony) then presumably the colony in the hive will then create more supersedure cells to replace the queen, in which case we’ll then just let them get on with it. And, once again we’ll also have the nuc with a new queen that can be used as an insurance policy.

It’s not quite what we were expecting within our first couple of weeks of beekeeping but it’s all part of the learning experience.