Grafting / Queen rearing 2019

[greengumbo]

Demarees all over the place.

Last year I removed all laying queens to nucs and allowed hives to raise new ones but I noticed some colonies just stopped honey production as soon as queen was removed. I'm doing half and half this year.

Two more apideas filled last night.

[fatshark]

Interesting, I have one queenless colony that is piling in the nectar far better than neighbouring colonies. I seem to remember we discussed this last season as well. I keep on offering it test frames. They're ignored, there's no brood and I'm 99% certain there's no queen present.

[madasafish]

Started Nicot QR mid April. Waste of time as weather turned cold and queens all went off lay and despite feeding only 1 QC= which came to nothing.
Restarted last week - looks like 10 ish QCs started - currently due to be sealed 23 May. Lots of swarming locally. Came home form inspecting hive we had rescued from laying workers (add brood, queen unite/smoke like mad/air freshener) to find : 1 prime swarm in buddleia at shoulder height , 5 casts distributed around plum tree - all at shoulder height.(from TBH which I only inspect at irregular intervals and crammed with bees)

Easy hiving.. but six ! Run out of 5 frame nucs, so using home made 5 frame mating nucs (about 1/3rd National brood frame), Just have enough hive stands and roofs..

When the 10 or so QCs emerge I'll run out of mini mating nucs and vegetable garden will be full of them! (I set them up initially with virgins - more successful than QCs..)

4 Langs on 4 supers, two on 2, 2 with 1, running out of supers : will have to start extracting.