Jon

lots of checking to do this weekend

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Jon
, 28-07-2012 at 10:48 AM (2903 Views)
I have been away for 3 weeks and got home in the early hours last night.
I have 16 full colonies, 10 nucs and 32 apideas to check.

The big worry is possible swarm loss but all the queens in the full colonies are clipped.

I just checked 3 nucs and 4 apideas I have in the garden and saw the queens.

Two of these nucs has new queens taken from apideas introduced via a cage just a day or two before I left. Both had good brood patterns and one had brood over 5 frames, the other over 3.

The apideas and the nucs were all quite clogged with stores so there has obviously been some decent foraging conditions. I saw some newly emerged bees in the nucs and they were dark which is a good sign that the queens probably mated with native type drones.

Off now to check a stack more at my allotment.

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  1. Jon's Avatar
    Got about half way through what I need to check this weekend even though the weather was awful. Some sunny spells but very sudden torrential showers.

    I got a look in all the apideas and 25 have laying queens which is a good result out of 32.
    They have obviously thrived being left untouched for 3 weeks.
    I left a batch of 12 apideas with ripe cells in on 8th July and 2 had failed to hatch. One of these had made a little scrub queen from a frame of brood.
    One had absconded. There was a frame completely laid up with eggs but no bees left at all.
    Two had been overrun by wasps but one still had the queen and about 3 workers so I put her in an introduction cage and made up a nuc around her.
    Most of them had sealed brood and some even had workers emerging and it was pleasing to see that there were very few with yellow banding.

    I also got all the nucs checked bar one and the queens introduced at the start of July were laying well.
    One had managed to lay up 6 frames of brood in a 7 frame nuc.
    What I was really pleased to see was no sign of early supersedure cells.
    I used to have a problem with Roger Patterson syndrome but I think I have got on top of it by (a) not introducing queens when they have only been laying a couple of days, (b) controlling nosema which has been linked to early supersedure, (c) resisting the urge to clip and mark brand new queens before the bees in the nuc are all their own offspring, ie wait to next spring. Touch wood of course. Still time to go belly up.

    Tomorrow I need to go through the colonies. I only got looking in two today. One was bunged with bees and had a super full of honey but the other has definitely lost its queen and may have lost a swarm as well. There were 3 open cells which looked like supersedure cells so I suspect that one of these new queens has legged it with some of the workers. The box was still pretty full with bees over 11 frames but there were no bees in the supers.
    I checked this one on 4th July and saw the marked queen and today there was only a few cells of drone brood so they must have started to make supersedure cells the second I replaced the crown board.
    I hope I don't find any more like that.
    I can handle losing a clipped queen as I have a load of replacements now, but losing half the bees is a pita.