Always good to find a laying queen. I started with 5 queens in apideas just over 3 weeks ago. One died right away as it was not fed. Two disappeared within the first week. I had high hopes for the last two but one lot absconded last Saturday and the final one appears to have disappeared on a mating flight last weekend so 0/5 in that experiment. Do you have you bees boxed in with pallets or suchlike? I have 12 colonies on my allotment but you wouldn't know they were there until you are right beside them. Not a single natural queen cell yet but I hope to check tomorrow and am bound to find some.
I think that just goes to prove that whatever anyone says about bees, regardless of their experience or sucess, there is someone 5 minutes away who can instantly demonstrate that it's a load of utter hogwash. Besides you said it had a few bees on it, that makes it worthy of insection I can't speak for the other guy, but just based on the photo, that's a quantity of bees I'd say makes the frame worth pulling out to see what's going on. I was talking about frames that are completely empty and despite playing with some pretty dark comb yesterday it's pretty easy to see whether a frame has bees on it or not looking down or even once you get the frame halfway out the box. There's also an element of context involved as well, please for the love of the flying spaghetti monster never take anything I write down as literal truth that should be followed at all costs (unless it involves sending me money). I'm certainly guilty of pulling out frames of foundation and looking at them. Honestly what is the point? even if it's only for a few seconds, what have I learned by staring at foundation? Not a great deal I have to admit. That next frame in is actually comb but I can see there's no bees on it, what is pulling that out going to tell me about the colony?
Hi Nellie and Adam. That's all well observed. We are bee addicts probably in need of a 12 point programme. I am spending a ridiculous amount of time with my bees and can't get enough of it. Nellie, re. your second point, frames without bees, what about this pollen frame which had only a few bees on it. http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/al...tachmentid=235 If I hadn't removed it I would have missed the two supersedure cells. I remember Roger P advising that you check the side walls for queen cells as well, although as we all know, he is the man with the queen problem!
An excellent blog - and well explained I know exactly what you're saying. 1) yes been there too 4) This is a good point - looking for what is right is like showing someone what there is in a hive "here's the little queen and this is a drone and here is the pollen etc." 5) Agree, i was shown to push each inspected frame tight on the previous one which means there is no possibility of a second chance of crushing bees when moving them to get the last frame in. By pushing them thigh you don't get frame creep where the spacing increases - especially when ther's a dummy board and there is more room available. 6) Definitely; it can take an age to find a queen in a mini-nuc as well. 7) Err I think I have; it's taking me too much time this year. I need to cut down. Now if I can sell a few nucs I'll be Ok and the bank balance will also improve.
Cheers. Be good to give the database a try. Don't worry about those queen cups unless you find a larva in one. They make them all the time. If you get 4 frames of brood hatching within a couple of days that could be well over 10,000 bees. I have a couple in a similar situation.
I was thinking the same thing and it will be interesting to see. As there was an unused frame of comb at the back of the colony I moved that to the edge of the brood area which might give her Maj an extra frame to play with so there might be more yet I was trying to limit the feeding this year and I could taste the sugar syrup from the odd bits that fell from the frames so I think I overfed them a little earlier on in the year. i've still got plenty of wax for them to draw so I'm not overly concerned about the syrup at the moment, but this time last year I'd have been adding several litres of syrup in one go and not thinking twice about it so I'm slightly amused by the differences already apparent this year. I found a couple of empty queen cups on a couple of frames, but with no drones in the colony I'm not reading too much into that at the moment. At least I'm making the assumption that if they don't have any drones they'll assume no-one else has either and not try to swarm. I've knocked them down anyway, I'm never too sure whether I should or not but I know that if I find a queen cup next time it [probably] wasn't there last time I looked. I know things went a little quiet on the Bee Database front, but I'm now starting to use it in earnest and it's not a million miles away from what i wanted so I'll try and find a couple of days next week to tidy it up and get a version you can use real information in out to the peeps who gave me feedback.
Hi Neil. That sounds pretty good. I have a couple of colonies like that but most are smaller. If there is a frame and a half of stores, they don't need any feeding. If you have 4 frames of eggs and young larvae, get ready for the population explosion in just over 2 weeks.
I marked or remarked all of mine over the last couple of weeks. I don't clip either as there is no need to if you do weekly inspections and carry out an artificial swarm on the first sight of queen cells. It is always argued that you just lose one bee rather than an entire swarm if you clip, but I am with Trog in that I would hate to lose a good queen in the grass.
Well, maybe it's just the way Mull bees are, but I've never had a problem seeing the queen - even when I'm not looking for her! It's the way she moves that catches my eye. (cue song) Granted, in a choc-a-bloc colony I occasionally have to go through the frames twice if doing an artificial swarm, but usually her maj is easy to find, and usually I don't need to look for her anyway . If there are eggs and a good brood pattern, she's fine!
If you are hoping for swarming preparations in order to make increase I'd hesitate about the 14x12. All that space - especially if your queen is young - is quite likely to reduce the swarming urge. I'm going to sound a rare note of disagreement with Trog. ASs are much better if you can find the queen, and the uninitiated hunting for an unmarked queen in a colony bursting with bees will not find it easy. Mark her asap before they get more populous - and if you leave her unclipped you will feel extra pressure to check weekly for Q cells (and remove the risk of cutting off a leg).
Why the need to mark and clip the queen? We don't touch ours as they're far too valuable (and virtually irreplaceable) to risk damage.
We did and it's not something that I've discounted but with a single colony I'm not at a stage where I'm prepared to just leave them to it hence giving them an apiguard treatment to get an idea of the count; I'm encouraged by the low count. Even taking the lowish temperatures into account I was expecting a much higher mite count than what I found. It was also one of the reasons why I decided not to treat with OA over the winter despite the reasonably high drop from the Apiguard treatment in the autumn. For the next season or two I'll be content to gather some data and hopefully raise a few new colonies from this one to compare with. After the shenanigans of last year (mainly self inflicted I hasten to add) I'm very encouraged at they way they've come through winter. With regards to the 14x12 I'll be happy if I can get 2 frames drawn before removing it again as it'll have to take a standard national fame as part of the artificial swarm which nicely gives me a drone frame to play with as an going measure. We shall see how it goes though, if nothing else I haven't actually pinned the frames yet and I'd like to get the super frames drawn first if I can. If I do manage to raise a split it'll also be interesting to compare how they fare on a 14x12 compared to a standard National.
It might, it might (give them so much room that they see no need to try swarming) ... and if they do you will have one impressive heap of bees to sift through! I detest those castellated spacers. Really don't know why the suppliers are offering them as standard in some cases. Did we discuss the possibility that your bees are super-hygienic? It *might* be the case that they are controlling the mites effectively themselves (but please don't bank on that!).
You're very welcome Nellie. I well remember sailing confidently into year two, have more or less done it all myself the first summer. Then, well ..... you'll find out!
Well done for taking the plunge. Nothing finer than scribbling a few melliferous musings of a spring evening.
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