nematode

and then there were two

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nematode
, 21-06-2011 at 06:57 PM (3310 Views)

Stage two of the artificial swarm was to split the hive in two and feed the ‘swarmed’ half of the bees. The weather prophets predicted heavy rain which I was glad of to ensure that the bees would take themselves off on a wee trip. The rain never came and the day was a glorious one that I observed from the confines of my classroom. However, I still believe that there are loads of bees still in the hive and they might not have swarmed at all. I might have just caught them in the nick of time.


The old queen, who is actually still a young girl only one year old, is now removed form most of her baby daughters. She sits (if she is still there) where the old hive once stood and has the company of most of the foraging bees she brought into the world months ago.


The old hive with most of the babies, the nurse bees and the new baby queen (possibly queens?) Are housed in their new location. I am not to touch this hive for several weeks so as not to disrupt or disturb the natural way of things. The new queen needs to stretch her wings, find a man, let the man die as his genitalia is snapped off, and then settle down to have a new family.


strange clouds hang over the cottage this evening

People have asked me why we have bees. Mostly people ask when we will have honey. We are keeping them for the fun of it, the challenge of it, and for the things we will learn. I have always found insects interesting, particularly the social insects. Of course this does not mean they are particularly social to us and we are not really fussed on them dropping in for a cup of tea. But they are better viewed, not as thousands of bees, but as one superorganism; the hive. I have learnt so much reading about the bees and going on the course, but there is vastly more to learn.


a DIY hive - work in progress

Another avenue for self improvement has also opened up; DIY. Tonight I continued in my construction of a DIY hive and a little nucleus box. After wiggly lines and a one or two bent saw bits, I re-learnt something I had forgotten years ago. Specifically that the fastest possible super fast setting on a jigsaw is not necessarily the best choice.


a nucleus hive (temporary mini hive) under construction

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  1. Jon's Avatar
    Hi nematode. I suspect your queen is likely to destroy the genitalia of up to 15 suitors rather than a single beau.

    After an artificial swarm you need to check the part with the queen cells 6 days later and remove all but one. If not, you are likely to lose a cast swarm - or several. There will be 1000 bees hatching every day and a few days after the artificial swarm you will have plenty of flying bees working through. Don't believe that stuff about the first queen emerging pulling down the remaining cells. If you place the half without the queen immediately on one side of the queen right colony you can move it to the other side a week later to bleed off the flying bees into the hive with the queen but you look to have several yards between the two so not really practical.

    Watch out for Gavin with a user name like nematode. He likes his spuds.
  2. gavin's Avatar
    I did wonder about that user name! I can't imagine an Irishman actually celebrating one of the potato's gretaest foes .....
  3. nematode's Avatar
    I don't understand, nematodes help me in my fight against slugs. I have a question; what if the queen did actually leave and this was the reason I could not find her. I will check to see in the 'swarmed' hive in a couple of more days (the AS was carried out on Sunday). What do I do if there is no laying?
  4. Jon's Avatar
    One man's nematode is another man's potato cyst eelworm!

    Did you see any capped queen cells. if so, you queen has probably already left with a swarm.
    I see one part of your split has supers on and may well have far too much space.
    You need to estimate how many bees you have and how much space they need.
    If there is no queen, you could recombine via newspaper to keep a strong colony.

    If you have lost a swarm, what you have now is probably a couple of nucs but housed in full sized brood boxes.

    One of the most common phrases in beekeeping is 'I can't find the queen and there are sealed queencells but they definitely didn't swarm as the box is still full of bees' If I had a fiver off my father every time I have heard him say that - I would have a big bag full of fivers.

    The second most common phrase in beekeeping is uttered about 3-4 weeks after losing the swarm mentioned above.

    Help my bees are queenless. There is no brood at all. Has anyone got a spare queen!
    There is usually a 10-15 day old virgin in the colony at this point.

    Whatever option you take you need to remove all queen cells bar one of you will lose more cast swarms.
    A guy in my bka who has two colonies lost the two prime swarms and about 7 additional casts in April.
    You couldn't walk down Cyprus avenue without collecting a swarm off a lampost.

    PS.
    The woodwork look good. Trumps my plastic boxes.
  5. nematode's Avatar
    Yes, the queen cells were capped. I have been inspecting every 7 days and on Saturday I was very sick and posponed until Sunday. On Saturday, while I was feeling very sorry for myself, my wife came in from wandering around in the garden saying how there were a lot of bees around the front of the hive and she said that she had never seen so many at the front. A tiny fragment of my mind thought, "that's interesting" while the rest of me thought, "I think I'm going to be sick again". So, yes.....

    One of the most common phrases in beekeeping is 'I can't find the queen and there are sealed queencells but they definitely didn't swarm as the box is still full of bees' If I had a fiver off my father every time I have heard him say that - I would have a big bag full of fivers.
    ....that's beginning to sound very like me.

    What now? When do I recombine? Presumably I need to clear the super first?
  6. Jon's Avatar
    Hi Nematode
    If you are sure there is no queen and you want to recombine, just put the two stacks together with a sheet of newspaper in between but the key thing here is to leave just a single queen cell or you will lose more casts. If something goes horribly wrong and you need a queen or a queen cell just PM me as I am running a bee breeding group through Belfast BKA. I am hatching about 20 queens a week at the moment. We have a group going with the aim of improving the quality of our bees, based on using selected native bees. If you check through my recent blog posts there is a fair bit of rigmarole about it.

    If you want to test for queenlessness the usual procedure is to put in a frame with eggs and young larvae on it. if there is no queen present they will draw out queen cells. if you have queen cells in both parts of the split I would be fairly sure your bees have already swarmed.

    Actually in your situation a lot of people would leave the split, each one with a single queen cell. If one queen mates and the other fails, you recombine at this point. It helps to have the two colonies close together though.

    And Saturday was definitely warm enough for a swarm to have come off in between the showers. It was quite nice early afternoon.
    Updated 22-06-2011 at 10:32 PM by Jon
  7. nematode's Avatar
    I went into the moved hive with most of the brood frames when I got home from school. There was only one closed queen cell and my suspicions about missing one were incorrect. There were a couple of emergency cell started charged with jelly so I broke them down and left the one beautiful classic queen cell.

    I went over to the ‘swarmed’ hive with the mind that I would get a nice queen from Jon (the most prolific and gentle one he had, of course). I stood at the hive and wondered what point I had looking in as there was no purpose to my inspection. I know that I should not look out of curiosity but I decided to dive in anyway. I did not want to mess about too much so I just went for the one frame of brood I put in. About a third of the sealed brood had hatched since Sunday and there were larvae in nearly all stages. The rest was filled with nectar and pollen. One cell caught my eye and I thought I saw what looked like an egg. It was more than likely the light catching a puddle of nectar. It got my curiosity going enough to feel the need to look at the one frame of stores I slipped into the ‘swarm’. They had completely emptied it and filled it with these……



    ….AAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me…………. LOL I thought there were still a lot of bees!

    I leaving it all alone for a few weeks now. At least I can relax and not worry about the 7 day inspections.