Jon

Dimmest move of the year

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Jon
, 31-08-2011 at 05:55 PM (3487 Views)
I have a big colony at the bottom of the garden which was on double brood and 4 supers at one point over the summer. The top brood box was almost completely full of capped honey with just a couple of small patches of brood at the bottom of 3 of the centre frames. I extracted the supers a couple of weeks ago and decided to remove the top brood box with the honey before starting Apiguard treatment. On the spur of the moment I decided to make up a nuc with the 3 frames which had a little brood. I added a frame of honey and shook in bees from the other honey frames as I removed them one by one. I suspended an introduction cage with a queen in it between the frames and took it to our association apiary site. The main colony got its Apiguard and I closed up. Last Thursday I went to open the tab on the intro cage and found the queen and attendants dead. I reckoned I had not left the nuc queenless for long enough and they had rejected her.
I promised to make up a nuc for one of our BKA members with a queen he has in an Apidea, and having a queenless nuc this seemed like a perfect opportunity. I got his queen into the introduction cage and brought it to the nuc.
I decided to check the nuc before introduction of the queen as several queens at that site have changed places this summer and a queen could have flown in I reckoned. Second frame in I saw eggs and larvae. Aha! How smart I am to think of checking that. But...on the next frame I found my marked and clipped queen from the colony in the garden. I must have removed her from the main colony when I made up the nuc. Beginner mistake or what!
That was monday week ago so the colony in the garden will be full of queen cells due to hatch from Saturday onwards, assuming it does not have a supersedure queen which is always possible.
I will need to remove them and requeen before the weekend as this queen is not one I want to breed from.
I still have queens in apideas so no problem there.

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  1. Jon's Avatar
    I opened the colony in the garden yesterday and sure enough it was full of queen cells.
    I removed them all, at least I hope I did, and split it into two good sized nucs, each with a new queen in an introduction cage.
    One of them is staying put and the other was moved earlier to another site to stop the flying bees returning home.

    It could have been worse but still a dumb mistake.
    I got 5 nucs and 95lbs of honey from that colony this summer so it owes me nothing.
  2. gavin's Avatar
    Why do you think that colony did so well? Hybrid vigour? A tendency to nick stuff (honey, bees) from other colonies? The best colonies I've seen this year in terms of production have not been ones I want to breed from either.
  3. Jon's Avatar
    Hybrid vigour I reckon.
    It is a native queen which must have encountered yellow drones as well over 50% of the offspring show yellow banding.
    I am confident about the queen as I grafted dozens from the same parent last summer and some of them produced 100% scattergrams.
    I did the morphometry and it was about 35% AMM so definitely not a breeder.

    It is also more aggressive than my other colonies although manageable with care.
    It was also my only colony to swarm this year but they all went back home after an hour with the clipped queen.

    The other reason it produced a lot of honey is lack of competition. I doubt if I have another beekeeper within a mile of my garden and the forage is excellent in suburbia. A lot are coming back with balsam stripes as well so they are probably visiting the River Lagan 3/4 of a mile away.
    I walked the dog there this morning and the quantity of balsam is unbelievable.
    I have most of my bees at the allotment and over the summer had just two colonies in the garden.
    I opened the other one yesterday and the brood box was clogged with honey and it had half a super filled as well. This one was a two frame nuc at the start of June.

    I also got it to make a dozen queen cells when I gave a frame of grafts to the queenless split after it swarmed. I requeened the split with a queen from an apidea after removing the grafts 10 days later and that one is doing nicely as well.