Neils

Head Scratcher

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Well, I think my Nuc has gone from virgin queen to swarmed in about 6 days.

I will admit to placing a test frame in it last thursday, I'm also absolutely adamant that this frame had no queen cells on it as it came out of the 14x12 and was on standby in case the 14x12 was showing signs of trying to swarm again so I could get the queen out into another Nuc (my Nucs are standard National at the moment) so it'd already been checked once to ensure it had no queen cells on it and I checked it again before putting it in the Nuc.

But 7 days suggests I somehow missed it over two separate inspections last week.

I'm not 100% convinced I didn't just miss the queen as there were plenty of eggs in the Nuc but having gone over every frame 4 times I'm going with the likelyhood that she might have gone although there wasn't a noticeable reduction in quantity of bees.

I opened the sealed queen cell as there were two more uncapped with young larvae just to make sure there was actually something in it and I'm going back on sunday after I've moved the 14x12 to recheck it, if there's no eggs on sunday my brand new queen definitely buggered off

If there's an upshot, at least it was the Nuc that swarmed and not the 14x12. I can cope with the Nuc being queenless for another couple of weeks, but if I missed it then I would obviously have missed it and lost a prime swarm from the 14x12 which I suspect might well have been a bit more noticeable.

I bet keeping wasps isn't as stressful.

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Updated 04-06-2010 at 12:03 PM by Neils

Tags: queen, swarm
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  1. Jon's Avatar
    How long had she been laying - just a few days?
  2. Neils's Avatar
    She had. The mystery continues. I had another look today figuring that 4 days would be enough to confirm whether there's still a queen in the Nuc and sure enough there were eggs and the cells that I left behind. I'm going to keep an eye on this one, but I've moved it out of the Nuc into a full hive and removed the queen cells. I still can't find the queen, I think my eyesight must be failing in my old age and the weather was turning so I didn't waste too much time looking for her. We'll see how we get on with this one, but I'm tentatively going to declare myself the keeper of three colonies at the moment
  3. Jon's Avatar
    Hi Neil
    I have a mystery on my hands as well. I checked a colony on Saturday 22nd May and all well, queen seen, eggs, 6 frames brood, no queen cells.
    I checked again 6 days later in bad light and saw eggs but didn't see the queen, no queen cells present.
    I checked last Friday 4th June and again no queen, no eggs, just a few mature larvae about to be sealed and.... about 7 queen cells both sealed and unsealed.
    I am almost certain it didn't swarm due to the number of bees present, especially flyers and if it had swarmed I would have had a queen cell already hatched or on the point of hatching. I opened a couple of the more developed ones and they were still 4 or 5 days off maturity.
    So - the options are:
    She swarmed on open cells and took very few bees. (not likely)
    She failed and was bumped off by the colony.
    She had a mishap during my inspection on 28th May.
    Most of the cells look like emergency cells although there are a couple which look like they could have started from a queen cup.
    I reckon it has to be the second or third option.
    I have a load of cells from my best two colonies due to hatch this week and next so it's not the end of the world but I don't like these puzzles you get in beekeeping.
  4. Neils's Avatar
    intriguing. Have to admit that in my case I'm still far more likely to blame Beekeeper error but when all's said and done I know what a queen cell looks like and I'm not bad at spotting a queen; so to fail to find her on a 5 frame Nuc not once, but twice, is pretty annoying. Have to admit that apart from occasions like today when I could really do with confirming that a queen is present that I'm not that bothered if I see her or not (though I do like to see the queen).

    But I'm still not sure what's going on with this one. I'll be sticking to 7 day inspections on it for a little while yet. To be fair to the bees the Nuc was starting to get pretty full so I don't really blame them for thinking about swarming, I just can't reconcile what I'm seeing with the timescales at the moment.
  5. Jon's Avatar
    Roger Patterson has been going on about queens behaving strangely or disappearing for years now. He has a good summary document somewhere on the bbka site.
    What I found in that colony is consistent with a queen just disappearing or being squashed. An emergency queen cell is sealed after 4 days so you suddenly find sealed queen cells in the next weekly inspection. You also get open ones which were started from a newly hatched egg 4 days after the queen went awol.
  6. Neils's Avatar
    We had a good colony last year for Roger to look at. It started out as a little cast swarm and then proceeded to supersede every queen it raised well into september and October. The colony next to it happily raised a new queen in the same time, in fact she's the mother of all my new queens this year.

    I'm not ready just yet to start blaming the bees. There's eggs on the frames at least so there must be a queen in there somewhere, she's not going to spend much longer unmarked after the last couple of weeks
  7. Jon's Avatar
    My queen which just disappeared, they tried to supersede her several times during August but I kept removing the frame with the supersedure cell to make a nuc. I got three extra nucs this way and they eventually stopped trying to supersede but maybe they knew something I didn't.
  8. Trog's Avatar
    We found a puzzling colony today, exactly one week after we did an artificial swarm. Queen and flying bees were left with a couple of frames of brood/stores, a super, and a whole lot of undrawn brood frames to keep them occupied. Today there were lots of emerging bees, a few very small (so recent - since our last inspection) larvae, no eggs, and 10 well drawn down queen cells at the very top and very bottom of one frame. Plenty of flying bees so swarm unlikely. We're wondering if, with so much undrawn foundation, she simply didn't have room to lay so they raised the queen cells in response to this. Have decided to leave it a day and look again. The emerging bees will have left her some laying space and if we find eggs we'll probably make up a nuc from the queen cell frame plus donated bees from other colonies.
    The good news is that 2 of our nucs have mated, laying queens, and two have hatched queens who should mate any day now. Has been perfect mating weather, for once!
  9. Jon's Avatar
    Hi Trog:
    Well done with the mated queens. I'm still waiting for the first but should be any day now.

    and a whole lot of undrawn brood frames to keep them occupied
    I think its best to give the old queen at least a couple of drawn out frames along with the foundation after the artificial swarm as she can run out of space very quickly and the just make more queen cells and she swarms again taking most of the bees as they are nearly all flyers.
    Updated 08-06-2010 at 10:06 AM by Jon (typos)
  10. Trog's Avatar
    We didn't have any choice - have made up so many artificial swarms and nucs this year we're having to use new frames and foundation! That's why we're waiting a day to see if the huge emergence which took place today will give her space to lay. Have one more colony to check tomorrow anyway - just couldn't get round all of them, which reminds us why we thought 8 was too many years ago! Luckily no guests in at the moment ...! Beginning to wonder if any booked guests will actually get here - no rail, no road just now!
  11. Jon's Avatar
    Thankfully mine are not trying to swarm yet this year, just building up huge colonies, but I am already running low on frames.
    I have 9 colonies, 7 nucs, various Apideas and over 20 queen cells from my best two colonies due to hatch within a week.
  12. Trog's Avatar
    Took another look today and one qu cell has just been sealed, and they've raised a few more. So I've put the 2 frs with brood and 2 qu cells into a nuc box with a couple of super frames full of stores to see what happens. Think her maj is still in original box, though for once my queen-spotting skills went AWOL. (Couldn't even find a queen in a tiny nuc today - pathetic or what?). If queenie's OK, she'll get laying again. If not, the insurance policy is in the nuc box!
  13. Trog's Avatar
    Took another look today and one qu cell has just been sealed, and they've raised a few more. So I've put the 2 frs with brood and 2 qu cells into a nuc box with a couple of super frames full of stores to see what happens. Think her maj is still in original box, though for once my queen-spotting skills went AWOL. (Couldn't even find a queen in a tiny nuc today - pathetic or what?). If queenie's OK, she'll get laying again. If not, the insurance policy is in the nuc box!
  14. Neils's Avatar
    Glad it's not just me who seems to have lost their ability to spot a queen.

    I know what you mean about kit. I hived off the Nuc on Sunday having verified there were still eggs there, hopefully the extra space will calm them down a little. But I took two supers full of honey (and Bees) off the other 14x12 to move it over the weekend which has just given the National a big injection of both space and additional bees.

    What I thought was a big pile of kit for one colony at the beginning of the year is now dramatically reduced, I've had to blag a spare Brood box and Nuc from a few people and I'm still starting to panic a little I do at least have plenty of national frames spare, but my nightmare scenario this week is the possbility of having three colonies trying to swarm when my spares pile now consists of a single brood box and two national Nucs. Might be time to try and rustle up a snelgrove board from somewhere and try and manage the situation that way with the spare brood chamber at least.

    So I now have:

    1 14x12, now located on my new apiary site. This has 1 super of partially drawn frames on it and contains the original Queen. This has shown signs of trying to swarm again but I didn't feed them when I did the AS and put them on foundation. With Hindsight, despite not having flying bees I might have been better off putting the supers on the National box instead and feed this one to get the foundation drawn.

    1 14x12 on the allotment, created from the national Nuc with the beginnings of two queen cells removed. The box was packed with bees although there was still a frame and a half of comb empty for the queen to lay in, hopefully giving them all this room to play with will calm them down a little.

    1 National, the other half of the AS, also on the allotment, this has 3 supers and probably needs a fourth, while it wasn't especially busy, it also wasn't that small a colony either and the new queen is 2-3 weeks into lay now. I gave it the two full supers, united using newspaper from the 14x12 so that I could move it. We'll see what effect that has over the weekend.

    I'm now completely out of floors, QXs, and roofs. have one brood box, two supers and a mixed bunch of 14x12, national and super frames +foundation. All my comb is in use. I really don't want to lose the queen in the 14x12 on my new site as she only came into lay late last year and I really like her offspring so I'll be trundling off with one of the Nuc Boxes this weekend to try and make sure I don't lose her if they're trying to swarm again.
    Updated 09-06-2010 at 11:30 PM by Neils
  15. Jon's Avatar
    What I thought was a big pile of kit for one colony at the beginning of the year is now dramatically reduced,
    Hi Neil.
    I have used up most of my equipment as well and none of mine have swarmed yet. I don't know why, but 4 colonies have needed a second brood chamber this year and these are the ones I keep in reserve for artificial swarming.
    I have about 5 spare supers with frames.
    I have 22 queens due to hatch by next Tuesday as well.
    I made myself 5 correx nucs last wekend and these can take 7 frames each.
    I need to get myself more frames and foundation.
    If several colonies decide to make swarm preparations at the same time I am snookered.