Neils

It's all going super...

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Neils
, 16-04-2010 at 09:25 PM (2350 Views)
The wait for a full inspection continues, I'm either in the wrong place at the right time or it's just that little too nippy to want to take frames out for a leisurely look around and attempt at marking HRH.

As I didn't treat with OA over the winter I stuck on an Apiguard tray a couple of weeks back thinking that despite it being a little cooler than the manual suggests that I'd still get a fair idea of how bad the mite levels are and knock a good few down. Monday evening we took a trip up to the allotment and having dug the plot over a bit more turned my attention to the bees and out came the floor. if I'm being generous there were maybe 4 mites in total on the floor so I've decided not to bother with the second tray.

A quick top down look while I took the eke off showed 8-9 frames covered in bees so I decided to stick a super on in anticipation of the allotment bursting into flower. Having taken some time to do a bit of prep it turns out I didn't just build the brood box Top bee space last year but at least one, if not both supers. I'm sticking to my guns that it's the result of poor building instructions from maisemore! I took off the castellated spacers, drilled holes into the top edges, turned them upside down and nailed them back into the super to convert it back to bottom beespace. Last year's experimentation suggests that putting frames of foundation into 9 frame spacers gives you "interesting" comb patterns so I invested in some plastic spacers configured to "narrow" (one spacer close to the sidebar, the next close to the end of the top bar) and alternated the drawn comb from last year, which I trimmed back to be the same width as the top bar, with frames of foundation and my first experiment with a frame not using foundation at all. This frame did contain drawn comb which I removed leaving a cell or two's width of wax around the edge of the frame, it will be interesting to see how they deal with this.

My hope is that as the bees start to draw out these frames I'll begin to widen the spacing before moving them back into a super using 9 frame spacers again.

Hopefully tomorrow will live up to the weather forecast and I'll get my chance to carry out a full inspection, mark and perhaps clip the queen and get a better idea of just how far they're coming along, the entrance has certainly been busy and the few times I've popped the crown board to take a look suggests they're coming on nicely.

The next thing to try is putting the 14x12 box under the super to try and get them to draw at least a couple of frames in anticipation to trying to split the colony using an artificial swarm when they hopefully decide it's time to try and swarm. Assuming of course that giving them a huge amount of room with a standard national AND a 14x12 brood box, QE in place or not, doesn't put them off totally.

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  1. gavin's Avatar
    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!).
  2. Neils's Avatar
    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.
    Updated 17-04-2010 at 12:31 AM by Neils
  3. Trog's Avatar
    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.
  4. gavin's Avatar
    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).
  5. Trog's Avatar
    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!
  6. Jon's Avatar
    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.