New Colonsay queens! - MiniPlus now, or direct introduce (hopefully) tomorrow?

[prakel]

Also... why is Warreing a faff?

It probably isn't for most! I suppose we all see things in different ways. One example of faff from my point of view is the box juggling/splitting the brood when putting sections on (the top).

I don't have a problem with wild brood comb. I've run nothing else since 2014. They bulge & wave a bit at the corners, but there's usually time to go in & straighten them before any actual crosscombing happens. I've had wild comb nests up to 22 frames long, and hope to have longer once I've built a longer box. Some of the deep combs are on bottomless shallow frames, because I ran out of deeps last year, & just took the bottom bars off drawn shallow combs. They're fine, too - some of them are just gorgeous, I was admiring them a few days ago.
It's the supers that get me... Bees have no reason at all to produce parallel 35mm combs in a super, so they don't.
Well, mine don't, anyway - what do yours do?
Do you use more widely-spaced bars in supers?

If you're using the shallow boxes in the nadir fashion I simply don't see why the whole issue of wider store combs can't be solved without any further effort. Surely the bees will be moving from one box of brood comb, down, to another box in which they'll be building brood comb?

In the days when we were literally too broke to buy foundation I often used the the simple approach in supers and broods of putting new frames between drawn combs, which as others have said works very well. If short of those combs to begin with then it would make sense to me to use decent starter strips, they may not fit the ideal you're aiming for but they'll certainly ease the transition.

Boxes full of wild comb. Yes, been there too when time and circumstances have been against me (in the past I've also spent a lot of time away during the season while, in the push for numbers, keeping more colonies than I probably should have). But, those boxes have always been above an excluder so they're no problem to deal with.

[Emma]

If you're using the shallow boxes in the nadir fashion I simply don't see why the whole issue of wider store combs can't be solved without any further effort. Surely the bees will be moving from one box of brood comb, down, to another box in which they'll be building brood comb?

That's exactly what I was trying to get at, thank you. Very neatly put. I had a feeling I wasn't being very clear!
I'm not sure they'll do that at all times, but I think that, for my purposes, it's worth a try, at least in a hive or two.

In the days when we were literally too broke to buy foundation I often used the the simple approach in supers and broods of putting new frames between drawn combs, which as others have said works very well.

Either my bees are different (which I suppose is just possible), or there's some difference in the rest of what we're doing which leads to a different effect.

Here's an example from earlier this year. I started with 2 drawn combs - I think they may already have had stores in, I can't remember. I put a foundationless frame between them. This is what happened:

Top view - set of 3 frames, with the newer, paler top bar in the centre
P8200210.jpg

Side views - the side that was by the dummy is very flat, the other one less so. Some of the stores have been eaten into during the post-OSR dearth.
P8200211.jpgP8200212.jpg

Bottom view: P8200213.jpg The bees' frugal engineering design in response to the situation I set up. Rather than draw a whole new comb, the cells to either side of the gap have simply been extended to meet in the middle. (Some of the cells are over 1.5 inches long.) The spines of each comb, as far as I can see, remain centred on the original outer frames, so I don't think it's a response to the starter edges that I use.

Boxes full of wild comb. Yes, been there too when time and circumstances have been against me (in the past I've also spent a lot of time away during the season while, in the push for numbers, keeping more colonies than I probably should have). But, those boxes have always been above an excluder so they're no problem to deal with.

That is of course the obvious solution. Use supers & excluders, take the stores in whatever configuration, and return sugar syrup. I can really see why beekeepers came up with that idea!

[Emma]

Back on topic!

I looked inside the first Colonsay introduction nuc today. Just two frames. One has a decent amount of stores & pollen, the other, on each side, a big area of unsealed brood. The bees (comfortably enough of them to cover the brood & guard the stores) were very calm, unlike the parent colony.

I think she's in

[prakel]

Either my bees are different (which I suppose is just possible), or there's some difference in the rest of what we're doing which leads to a different effect.

Here's an example from earlier this year. I started with 2 drawn combs - I think they may already have had stores in, I can't remember. I put a foundationless frame between them. This is what happened:

Top view - set of 3 frames, with the newer, paler top bar in the centre
P8200210.jpg

Side views - the side that was by the dummy is very flat, the other one less so. Some of the stores have been eaten into during the post-OSR dearth.
P8200211.jpgP8200212.jpg

Bottom view: P8200213.jpg The bees' frugal engineering design in response to the situation I set up. Rather than draw a whole new comb, the cells to either side of the gap have simply been extended to meet in the middle. (Some of the cells are over 1.5 inches long.) The spines of each comb, as far as I can see, remain centred on the original outer frames, so I don't think it's a response to the starter edges that I use.

Bit of a late response but I've only just seen this post. A couple of thoughts come to mind, firstly I'd question whether the 'dummy' board is properly spaced. If it's a truly flat board (as it should be) and the frames are pushed tight to it I can't see how the comb can be built out further than it should be (from a beekeeper's hive management/interchangable comb perspective). Secondly, the extension of the combs into the middle frame does happen so your bees aren't too different from ours but I never found it to be a major issue, more times than not the combs are drawn very cleanly; flow and the state of the existing comb may well play a part, as an example I can well visualise how a combination of a heavy flow and open storage cells on one or both flank combs would result in those cells being extended rather than wasting time trying to build an entirely new comb in the middle.

That is of course the obvious solution. Use supers & excluders, take the stores in whatever configuration, and return sugar syrup. I can really see why beekeepers came up with that idea!

lol, the proper use of an excluder is just another tool, nothing to do with 'taking the stores' which, by the autumn, are usually below the excluder anyway -at least, in our hives they are).

[Kate Atchley]

....

There's a nice trick buried in the following video, and yes it is practical and does work although in your present circumstances it would be better used to determine whether to allow release by the bees rather than doing so manually:

https://youtu.be/Yg92q9hPIv8

Interesting "trick" to test whether Q will be accepted. Thanks Prakel. Will try that next time I'm introducing.

I tend to do as Gavin suggests and make up nucs on full-sized frames.

This year I must have missed an incipient queen cell when I introduced a queen. They seemed to like her so I opened the cage but the queen I found laying, a while later, was unmarked ... home-grown royalty it seemed.

[Kate Atchley]

.... So your MiniPlus and a newly created nuc should work but for slightly different reasons. The uniting of the MiniPlus with the larger stock is one thing that might prove a little tricky. If you place it over newspaper on top of the bigger colony the MP frames are quite likely to continue to be used for brood or honey. .....

Agree wholeheartedly with your list of ideal conditions for queen acceptance Gavin.

Re MPs, I needed to requeen a colony with a DLQ, in August. I untited them with frames from double MP box, with bees and laying queen. Using fat dummies at either end of an upper brood box, above newspaper **, the MP frames fitted across the box, at right angles to the dummies, supporting one another and still with the correct spacing. I think I had to leave out one or maybe two end ones ... can't remember which.

Once the queen was accepted I made sure she was in the lower brood nest before adding a QX. So now the brood has emerged from the MP frames in the top box and the frames are packed with stores. So these frames will be ready to use in MPs next Spring, when the queen rearing starts again, with or without the stores depending on the needs of the present colony.

**This was before I learned from Murray about using a room-freshener spray for uniting. Have now used it several times and it works superbly, just as he said!

[Jon]

I requeened 3 nucs at the start of the Month. In each case I removed the queen from the nuc and introduced a new one from an Apidea in an introduction cage. The nucs would have been queenless for about 5 minutes so probably did not even notice the lack of a queen. All were accepted and laying within a few days.

The other thing which works well when introducing queens is mixing a load of bees together and introducing a new queen.
I have been combining apideas to make bigger units and it is dead easy to introduce a queen to these.
I just put the frames from 4 or 5 apideas together and you dont get any fighting.

The last of my grafted queens which emerged on 31st August have started to lay this week.

[The Drone Ranger]

Regards the comb building not going to plan I noticed using the rainbow minis for the first time some bees ignored the plastic built in starter strips and built across the frames from one to the other instead
Anyway I think that had something to do with the direction the hives were facing possibly bees prefer to build comb running North to South
Because I pointed the mininucs entrance North (just the way the shelf faced)
They, not knowing the frames should be removable, ungratefully ignored my preference and built comb from the front to the rear of the nuc spanning all the frames

Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk

[prakel]

....I think that had something to do with the direction the hives were facing possibly bees prefer to build comb running North to South
Because I pointed the mininucs entrance North (just the way the shelf faced)
They, not knowing the frames should be removable, ungratefully ignored my preference and built comb from the front to the rear of the nuc spanning all the frames

Just out of interest, and in no way dismissing your hypothesis, Allen Latham carried out some experiments along these lines (using 40 mating nucs) in the 1930s but found no evidence to suggest that there was any basis to the idea:

I myself have felt that there was a possibility that the bee with her peculiar senses, able to do all her work in what is darkness to us, might respond to the magnetic lines which run around the earth, and that she might build her combs either across these lines or with them..........

.........A survey of the tables will show no preponderance in favour of any particular point of the compass. In regard to the entrance there is a preponderance in favour of the angle 45 degrees, yet not so large as to preclude chance.

Gleanings in Bee Culture Feb 1937

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi prakel
Just a thought
When you see comb being built in jars or empty supers etc I thought they might have a preference to line up midway with the sun as it goes from east to West
I have 5 double keilers with good queens hoping to overwinter them if I don't need them in the next week that is



Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk