As mentioned in the last blog swarming was uppermost on our minds. If you remember we have a colony of bees in a nuc which is queenright and expanding quickly.
We also have a colony in our wooden hive which was inspected first. The bees were quite aggressive when the hive was open and there appeared to be no frames of eggs, lava or pupa to be seen on any frames. The conclusion was that this hive was queenless although both queen cells had exit holes in their lower part.
Consequently, we made the decision to seek a queen cell from another beekeeper surplus to their needs. A donor was found and two queen cells were attached to the two inner brood frames. The hive was closed up and left for 23 days.
The nuc was expanding rapidly but there were no queen cells present and the queen was laying in uniform patterns. Our concern was one of overcrowding and we had brought a poly hive intending to split our hive in the spring.
What to do next? Move the nuc colony into the new hive or wait and see the outcome of the two queen cells in the wooden hive?
On opening the wooden hive we found one cell had been taken down and the other cell had a dead pupa in it.
Should we either unite the queenless hive with the queenright colony in the nuc?
Before we could come to a sound decision nature took over. The queenless hive swarmed? Fortunately, they only travelled to the next-door neighbours garden and I was able to coax them into a box which I left in place until late evening.
In the late evening, with the sun fast setting, I shook the bees into the brood box in the new poly hive and closed the hive up.
In summary, we now had a queenright colony in the nuc and a queenright colony in the poly hive and possibly a queenright colony in the wooden hive.
Why don’t bees read the same bee book and magazines as we do?
More in the next blog