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Thread: Last of the Apideas

  1. #21
    Senior Member Adam's Avatar
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    I had some mini-nucs lost to robbing and also lost some to absconding . I have two remaining. Neither are strong enough to survive the winter but there are queens that I have removed from other hives and are spares which would do if someone needed one in a hurry. It's fast approaching too late for that.
    I'm not sure if it's worth borrowing some bees from elsewhere to strengthen them.

  2. #22
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    Has anyone tried overwintering queens banked? By which i mean caged in a super, or at least inaccessible to the resident queen. Laidlaw and Eckert describe it I think, and got laying queens out the following spring. I'd be worried about the cluster abandoning the caged queens ...

  3. #23
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    I have read a bit about queen banking but never used it as a technique.
    My gut feeling would be that 6 months or so in a cage would cause some damage. Mind you, I have head people argue that queens kept too long in apideas are damaged but I have not found that to be the case.
    I sold a couple of queens yesterday so am still combining apideas.
    I use a piece of mesh cut to the size of the inner cover.
    This has a bee sized hole in it above the feed compartment which i plug with fondant.
    The queenless apidea contents are transferred to an apidea super which goes on top of the queenright apidea above the mesh.
    It usually takes about 2 days for the bees to chew through the fondant and by that time they have the smell of the queenright colony.
    As a further precaution, the bees first mix in the feeder compartment where the queen cannot enter so there is no chance of in influx of new bees balling her.
    Must take a couple of pics as this system works really well and it is a good way to use those scraps of mesh left over from floor making.

    Pictures here

    This is where I intend to overwinter Apideas, on shelving at the back of my shed.
    I still have another 4 or 5 to move there from elsewhere.

    apideas-for-overwintering.jpg
    Last edited by Jon; 28-09-2012 at 02:14 PM.

  4. #24
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    I have about 15-18 apideas with mated queens and I hope to overwinter these.
    If we have a winter like the one before last I will lose the lot but I would hope to get a few through to Spring in a mild winter.
    One problem I have at the moment is weak apideas with a mated queen but bees over just 1 or 2 of the 3 frames. They really need to be on 7 or 8 frames going into winter.
    This is not going so well. I sold a couple of queens and used a couple for requeening nucs with dodgy queens but I am down to 8 already.
    Some have just dwindled and others had the queen disappear.
    I hope this is not a sign of poor overwintering ahead as I have noticed a lot of clusters in my main colonies are smaller than they ought to be for the time of year.
    Queens shut down or reduced laying very early this year. Last year they were laying well into November.
    Last edited by Jon; 07-11-2012 at 03:38 PM.

  5. #25
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Haven't peeked under a crownboard for a while but I may do at the weekend. I did notice some bee bits on the floor of one which suggests that I should have got the mouse guards on the wide open entrances before now. Didn't try to overwinter any Apideas. Given the condition of many folks' bees higher than normal losses this winter seem quite likely unfortunately.

  6. #26
    Senior Member Adam's Avatar
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    I have one swi-bine mini-nuc remaining - It had it's stores robbed by wasps over recent weeks and last weekend bees were covering little more than 1 frame although there was a tiny amount of sealed brood. The queen was one whose daughters had temper issues and I only put her there after removal from a large colony because the little hive was available at the time. They won't last much longer. The queen isn't worth an attempt at banking. (Never tried it btw).

  7. #27
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    Checked my mini-nucs today as double figure temps for the first time in at least a fortnight and all (at least half-heartedly) flying. Did little more than peek under the crown board and replace the fondant frame feeder. All looked much as they started, with about a third weaker than I'd like. Probably irrelevant, but interesting nonetheless, the adjacent nucs (all 6-8 frames in poly) were not flying (and proportionally had used a lesser amount of stores, though probably had more in frames). We had a pretty hard frost on Monday night. I wonder if mini-nucs never properly cluster for some reason?

  8. #28
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    I wonder if mini-nucs never properly cluster for some reason?
    They do cluster but the cluster can freeze solid very easily if it is too small and there is a hard frost.

    This is one which froze last winter. It had around 75 bees in it. You can see it had stores and pollen.

    frozen-bees-apidea.jpg

    Mine were flying strongly today as well. It was around 11c.
    Last edited by Jon; 08-11-2012 at 08:48 PM.

  9. #29
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Down to 7 now but I think these ones are strong enough to last for a while yet.
    They were flying strongly yesterday and today.
    I have been sorting out the winter stores by putting an apidea super above each apidea and filling it half full of fondant inside a plastic bag. The remaining space above the fondant gets filled with a rectangle of polystyrene covered in tape to remove any extra space and provide some more insulation.
    I remove the feeders, so the bees are on 5 frames with the fondant sitting directly above the top bars.
    Two which I looked into had a frame of sealed brood.
    One of these is a 2012 queen which I removed from a nuc in September as it made a couple of supersedure cells.
    Interesting that it is still laying normal worker brood 2 months later.

  10. #30
    Senior Member Adam's Avatar
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    Jon,
    I can probably say without too many dissenting voices that it's quite possible (or likely?) for a duff (maybe nosematic?) queen to be superceded. I wonder if the size of colony in a mini-nuc is so small that the bees would not consider supercedure - as they would not be able to feed an egg well-enough to get a viable queen. Coupled with the fact that it's the wrong time of year.
    I too wonder is she will be replaced next year - either if your apidea gets full to bursting or if she is put in a full-sized colony in the spring.

    (One apidea that I overwintered ok last year got to be full-to-bursting this year. The queen was small and I just left her there in case of emergencies. The apidea was so full just couldn't see how all the bees would fit in it, but they did. All 3 frames were constantly solid with brood. (I did bleed some bees off on occasions). But they didn't produce a drone or queencell and arguably they would have tried to in a nuc or larger hive if so congested).

    You'll have to let us know if she survives and prospers.

    Do we have a bet on how many apideas survive?

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