I always feed and treat simultaneously and at the same time ... fondant and apiguard. I've never understood why some advise not to.
I always feed and treat simultaneously and at the same time ... fondant and apiguard. I've never understood why some advise not to.
Thymol is toxic to bees and some of the bees less able to deal with this toxicity die and tend to go somewhere daft like the trough of a feeder to die, this may be why the no feeding during treatment is sometimes advised as it can look like carnage if you get a hot day the day or so after the thymols first put in.
just looking at the weather forcast - looks like the start of september is going to be good for Q mating
Not if you saw tonights forecast 22/8/15 large blocking hig coming in from continent big rainfall expected for next 48 hrs in Ireland starting from 2am tonight.
September good for mating ... well some sunny spells at least. The last 12 are showing signs of imminent queen laying ... but will they get it together?
As for drone comb being built in mating nucs before a queen is mated:
- if this is on an outside frame and being filled with stores, is there anything ominous about it?
- if it's in a central frame does this suggests the bees expect the queen to fail or she's disappeared?
Last edited by Kate Atchley; 06-09-2015 at 11:52 AM.
I find that if the queen goes missing in an Apidea they usually wont draw any comb.
They do draw drone comb sometimes. Not sure why.
I am putting the last 20 cells into Apideas this week. Ever the optimist. I did my last grafts on Friday 28th so these queens should emerge on Wednesday.
I have been combining apideas after removing queens for a couple of weeks now to make them stronger.
If you combine 2 or 3 queenless apideas and add a cell it seems to work well with no fighting.
Last edited by Jon; 06-09-2015 at 01:30 PM.
I've been collapsing several mini plus hives down to one overwintering unit some time after harvesting the mated queens and leaving the combined lot with a virgin loose which just came with one of the boxes and they never seem to kill her when you're combing several queenless lots and I've noticed she's often laying a week later if there's been a mating window. I'm not sure wether this is coincidence or a feature of the combined lot encouraging her out but it's worked out advantageously with almost all the boxes I've tried this on.
My logic is that if you combine a queenright with a queenless colony the queen could get killed.
if you combine 2 or more queenless colonies the most you are risking is a queen cell.
It's probably better to unite 3 or more as this should reduce the risk of fighting.
I converted 8 three frame apideas to 3 eight frame doubles at the start of the week and gave each a queen cell.
I checked a few apideas this morning and they have queens but no eggs yet.
Some queens getting close to sell by date.
Bring on the good weather.
Aye, mixing lots of bees makes them very accepting of queens, I would have used cells if I had some but no virgins.
September is a funny month. The queen rearing can be effectively over at the start of the month if the weather is bad or you can end up with quite a number of mated queens you were not really expecting. Hopefully the latter!
Last edited by Jon; 06-09-2015 at 04:31 PM.
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