Neils

Down to Earth with a bump.

Rate this Entry
7 Comments
by
Neils
, 17-04-2011 at 05:55 PM (2617 Views)
I think my mentee got a crash course today of a wide selection of what can go wrong in beekeeping.

I got the first look at the colony down on the nature reserve and as soon as we opened it up I had a sinking feeling. The box was absolutely packed to the rafters with bees and, sure enough, sealed queen cells. I'd guess they must have gone almost a week ago judging by the lack of eggs and almost total lack of larvae in Brood laid across 9 14x12 frames in total. Everywhere there wasn't brood was crammed with nectar but I had at least taken a super down with me just to make sure they had some space

Up at the allotment I checked the hive that was supposedly being bailey changed. There's a queen, she was laying when I last checked but they'd done nothing with the 14x12 box on top at all. Never mind, let's take that off and let the mentee get her hands dirty in this hive. At the third frame we hit brood. All of it drone. And the fourth and the fifth etc etc etc. We saw the queen but that seemed neither here nor there really.

Feeling somewhat despondent I asked her to close that one up and we moved on to the other 14x12 that already had supersedure cells in it last week that I figured must be about ready to hatch. I removed one and checked it... Dead. I carefully removed another and peeled back the wax of the cell. Movement! That left 4 other cells in the colony. At this point the queen wasn't the only thing "hatching".

What if we took this virgin queen and replaced the drone layer with her? If we remove this queen, drone layer or not and replace her with a Virgin queen into a colony containing only drone brood is there a risk that the workers might turn drone laying? What if we put the virgin queen into the colony AND add a frame of Brood in all stages from one of the neighbour's colonies (after asking him naturally)? In the end we opted for the latter option. A frame of 14x12 brood placed into the upper box and the virgin placed onto the top bars of the national.

I did consider whether to just shook swarm them onto the 14x12 but opted in the end to keep them on the two brood boxes and take it from there. The old queen is sat in a matchbox in front of the keyboard where she seems to have quite happily just laid an egg. I think she may be destined to go to one of the guys on the BBKA forum.

I'm concerned about the continuing problems I'm having with queens on the allotment. I've never had a queen last more than a year so to see this one go drone laying and the other supersede in less than a year doesn't fill me with confidence especially when I'm ringed by other beekeepers so there's no apparent excuse for poor mating performance. I can accept some of the problems may be related to my own inexperience and mistakes but I'm hard pushed to see how any of that can make a queen go drone laying.

Submit "Down to Earth with a bump." to Digg Submit "Down to Earth with a bump." to del.icio.us Submit "Down to Earth with a bump." to StumbleUpon Submit "Down to Earth with a bump." to Google

Categories
Uncategorized

Comments

  1. Jon's Avatar
    Hi Neil. Don't kill yourself. Beekeeping does your head in sometimes. I was pretty cheesed off losing a load of nucs over winter.
    I still have 14 queens and fortunately none has turned drone layer. 5 of them are green spotters, entering their 3rd season and two of them are heading strong colonies already with loads of brood. I had 3 or 4 newly mated queens turn drone layer within a month of starting to lay last summer but that is par for the course - poor mating.

    I think you should get away with running in a pulled virgin or a cell on the point of hatching. Might have been better to wait 3 or 4 hours after removing the queen. If you find cells on that frame you have put in, they have probably dispatched her.

    You need to lie down on a psychiatrist's couch in a darkened room and relate your queen problems to Sigmund Patterson, the patron saint of early supersedure and disappearing queens.
  2. Calum's Avatar
    Drone layers - possibly poor weather during their mating flights..
    ?
  3. Neils's Avatar
    @calum. Consistent bad weather anytime a Queen Mates over the past 3 years is starting to stretch credibility a bit. I dare say that one or two might just be poorly mated. I won't know for sure for another year. I have 3 Colonies from a single split last year, 2 queens failed, the other one is going great guns. It might just be bad luck, we'll see what happens this year.

    @Jon, Wont be topping myself just yet, not done anything wrong to want to just yet. Just gone from 3 coming through winter to not having a laying queen in any of the hives. The one that swarmed that was my own fault. Figured if I ran in the queen and gave them a frame in all stages that I pretty much hedged my bets. Have to keep telling myself that it's early. I didn't have Drone brood, let alone drones until this point last year, this year the "best" colony swarmed before I got there to do a first inspection! Live and learn.

    So much for this years beekeeping resolution: "I will not lose a swarm", would have been interesting to see what they were like a week ago, today they were absolutely packed to bulging with bees.
  4. Jon's Avatar
    Hi Neil

    today they were absolutely packed to bulging with bees
    A lot of people don't even realise they have lost a swarm because the box is still crammed.

    There is practically nothing in beekeeping you can't fix with a spare queen cell or better still a few mated queens in Apideas.
    You could buy a couple of Apideas at £20 a pop and use those spare queen cells to keep a couple of mated queens in reserve.
    You can keep the apideas on a north facing windowsill at home so easily looked after.
    It really changes your perception as you just requeen immediately and it is business as usual. There are cheaper Apideas at a tenner each which probably work just as well. I see it as cheap insurance.
  5. Neils's Avatar
    Indeed, walk before you can run though and all that. I removed 15 queen cells from the swarmed colony though I'm not sure that I'd necessarily want queens from them. The colony was marked as being twitchy last year and we were followed a good 200 meters once we closed up! Definitely not the sort of bees I want on the allotment. That said they are queenless and they settled pretty quickly, but I'll reassess them later. If I had the Nucs I've ordered I might have made a couple up, I guess I can console myself that assuming the new queen emerges and mates ok that hive is going to produce most of my honey this year and I'll be taking a new super down pronto to keep them busy.

    I hate destroying queen cells so maybe I should get my hands on a couple of apideas in the meantime anytime and take the plunge sooner rather than later. I'll do some reading obviously but at a basic level is it as simple as graft the cell, chuck in a handful of (young?) bees and leave them to it?
  6. Jon's Avatar
    If you dont want to graft, just cut out a ripe queen cell from one of your colonies and put it in the apidea with a cupful of bees.
    I am planning out a queen rearing course based on apideas and some of those who will be participating have not got bees yet.
    There is no rocket science to an apidea. It's just a percentages game as some queens will get lost and some will fail to mate.
    If you put 3 queen cells in 3 apideas the chances are you will get one or two mated queens. Three would be very lucky, none would be very unlucky.
    I did this for people who brought me apideas last year and most of them got a mated queen or two out of it.

    Re. following. If I had bees follow me 5 metres let alone 200 the queen would be on the way out. Following is one of the most unacceptable traits in beekeeping as non beekeepers get stung.

    If you want to collect samples of 30-50 bees I will do the morphometry for you. Your colony may be some sort of hybrid. Wing morphometry can be a blunt instrument, cue R. Bache, but it can throw up useful information.
  7. Neils's Avatar
    Well, the queens already gone and I agree with you about following, we'll see how her daughter fares.

    We're down on queens at the moment, out of 5 colonies only two are queenright and they're not inclined right now to start swarming, typically. That said we've collected a swarm this evening so we'll see how they get on, at least that brings us up to 50% queenright!.