Jon

The missing Apidea

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Jon
, 27-05-2011 at 08:53 PM (3898 Views)
I lost an Apidea about a fortnight ago. I have 18 and on doing a stock take I could only account for 17.
I have one in the back garden with a mated queen and two more at the association site with mated queens spare from last year. That’s 3 so far.
I have two not in use makes 5. I set out 11 with ripe queen cells at my allotment the weekend before last, one of them a double as bees absconded from Tim’s Apideas into one of mine and I had to give it an extension. Total 17.
I have checked every shelf of my shed in the garden and likewise the shed at the allotment.
I had an Apidea at some of the meetings of our queen rearing group for demonstration purposes so I e-mailed various participants to ask if they had found a stray one amongst their bee bric a brac. No joy there. I also made contact with everyone whose car I had been in and out of with a bag of bee stuff recently without a result.

This evening I was requeening a colony which I have been using as a cell raiser as it has been queenless for a month and is starting to get cranky. I was also worried about the possibility of laying workers. I removed the last of the cells from it (I got about 40 altogether) and put a 6 frame nuc with a mated queen and 5 extra frames in a brood box above it via 2 sheets of newspaper, the queen in a cage to be on the safe side as the queenless colony fills two brood boxes and I don’t want the queen getting balled.

I also had to put rollers on 21 queen cells in another colony which are going out to members of our queen rearing group tomorrow.

All fine and dandy.

I got all that done and then planted out a few lettuce on the allotment, winding down after the bee stuff.

It was then that I noticed a solitary Apidea in the far corner.

I checked it and it had bees on the point of starvation as it was closed up.
I checked the queen cell and it had hatched.
I refilled the food chamber with syrup and opened it up.
There was a lovely black virgin queen in it.
There were only about 3 dead bees on the floor.
I realised that I had left this one closed up for 12 days after putting in a queen cell and had completely forgotten about it as it was set out away from all the others.

The funny thing is, the weather has been so bad that none of the other virgins have been on a mating flight yet so this one may not even be disadvantaged.

Bees closed in an Apidea are supposed to be sprayed with a mist of water once a day but these ones obviously hung in there for nearly a fortnight without the TLC.

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  1. gavin's Avatar
    My first filled Apideas were lugged around Tayside in the boot of my car but religiously sprayed with water twice a day ... and I made sure that I parked with windows open and in the shade of trees. They were rather noisy, but that might have been something to do with them bumping off the wrong-smelling queen cells they'd been given. Now they are 12 miles away in a sea of OSR and hawthorn (both still flowering) and with big butch Amm drones over the hedge.

    Mating flights here will be on Tuesday. I sense a warm spell, courtesy of the BBC weather people.

    Have you tried the queen-right ('Ben Harden' but actually the method of the NBU) cell raising method?
  2. Jon's Avatar
    Most of the cells I raised last year were via the queenright system.
    I have one queenright colony set up at the moment but it is only starting one or two grafts out of every 20 as conditions are completely wrong with temperatures of about 12c every day for the last couple of weeks.
    Some people have lost bees to starvation this month.
    Removing the queen and then all the queen cells a week later before introducing grafts leaves them no choice but to start cells with the introduced larvae.

    I have never had cells pulled down in Apideas. How long were the bees in the apideas before the cells were added? 3 days is recommended but you should get away with two. If you use bees from the colony with the cells you can just put them straight in.

    ...And re the lack of spraying, this apidea was facing west so it probably got water blown into it every day. I don't think we have had a rain free day for about 3 weeks. I don't know how it didn't take off in the storm last Monday as there are trees down everywhere.
    Updated 28-05-2011 at 09:07 AM by Jon
  3. gavin's Avatar
    For anyone curious about the queen-right method here it is:

    https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/bee...ment.cfm?id=36

    Haven't tried it, but I think that I now have the bees to do so. If they're healthy of course, which I must check. Heard some unwelcome news this morning on foulbrood locally.

    I filled the Apideas with my own bees then drove down the road to put association queen cells in them, after maybe one or two hours. The worker donor colony looks more carnie than Amm, the queen cells look Amm (untested by morphometry of course). The queen cells were sealed but maybe 3 days from hatching and I didn't protect them with foil - something Meg suggested on the (as far as I am concerned) now defunct BBKA forum (vandals!!!). I wasn't sure of the status of all four Apideas when I had more queen cells and virgins available so added either a freshly emerged virgin or foil-protected ripe queen cell to each one on Tuesday. The queens were given a light spraying with water in the hope that helped acceptance.

    Did that post say 6 am? That was even earlier than I was up today!
  4. Jon's Avatar
    up at 6am but I went back to bed until 9.00.
    I keep waking up too early.

    If you take the bees for filling apideas from a colony which already has queen cells in it you should have no bother with acceptance.
    Other than that, you need to fill a couple of days in advance.
    3 days before hatching is a bit early to put the cell in as the queen is probably not fully formed and could get chilled.
    A queen which get chilled can emerge with wing defects or stubby wings.
    I put rollers over the cells (or put cells in rollers if cells are being cut from a frame) 2 days before hatch date and put them in the apideas 1 day before hatching.
    Mervyn hatches the cells in his incubator, shakes the virgin into the apidea and then tips a cupful of wet bees on top of it. he says he has no problems this way.

    With the queenright system you need to have all the variables right as it is more demanding - feed, pollen, frame arrangement etc and the colony needs to be really strong. It is not working right for me yet this year although I got over 100 cells hatched this way last year.

    I intend to use any colonies which make swarm preparations as cell raisers for about 3 weeks before requeening.
    -remove the queen to a nuc
    -remove all cells a week later
    -Introduce graft frame
    -rollers on cells day 10
    -cell into apideas day 11
    -virgin hatches day 12.

    This has worked well for me so far this year with 20+ cells hatched and another 40 sealed and due to hatch this week.
    Updated 28-05-2011 at 10:26 AM by Jon