The Honey Factory

[Apis mellifera]

Do you have a link?

 

[jerryse]

 

[jerryse]

 

[Egghead_Jr]

It seems likely that swarm was a mating flight. If so then the hive will actually swarm anytime now. Some colonies swarm before the virgins hatch and others wait until they come back from mating. You'll need to get into that hive and find the old queen. Move her into another box on the frame you find her. If she is not marked you'll probably not be able to differentiate her from a newly mated queen as she is slimmed down by now to fly. Make a split, ensure there is plenty of drawn comb to lay in in both boxes. The change up of hive configuration and brood chamber opened up with drawn empty comb will usually change their swarming minds. If not then you only lose half of what you would keeping the colony together. If you can find both queens and put into each hive excellent. That's probably not going to happen but you can observe from there to determine what's what. Worse case is you have both queens in one colony and the old queen swarms with the foragers of that colony. If that happens then simply recombine the split with newspaper. You saved as many bees as you could.

It's important to inspect the colonies every two weeks. In doing so you'll realize swarm cells before they hatch and can make corrective actions to not lose any bees to swarms.

Keep in mind that foragers return to hive location. To equalize hives or keep from losing many foragers from potential swarm you can move hive locations. Wait until mid morning when most of the foragers have left then move the hive you want less foragers in to location of weaker hive. Move the weaker hive to location you want all those forage bees to go into. Borrow a hand dolly for quick and easy moving.

 

[duluthralphie]

I check the hives weekly. Every Thursday.

I am not worried, too much. This is my weakest hive.

Last week I saw one supercedure cell in it. There were no swarm cells. There was not much for brood in there.

Which is why them swarming surprised me. I think Jerry is right it was a mating flight.

I am pulling frames of honey on Monday. I will know more then.

I did add a super to it, because there was too much honey in the lower two boxes. I will be pulling some of them on Monday and replacing it.

I also need to pull my drone frames and freeze them.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

That really does change everything.

Won't be much to see in the hive. The new queen will be laying in a few days. The old queen will be dead or she was dead and that was an emergency queen cell.

Keep in mind queens emerge in 15.5 days from egg laid. If you had no larva and only some capped brood and that queen cell then it was an emergency cell. Old queen was squished in frame movements three weeks ago. From emergence add few days to harden shell, some hive orientation then off they go with some guides to drone site for mating. Perhaps you had so many attending her mating flight due to her being the colonies last hope.

 

[Apis mellifera]

When we see a swarm issue and come back its a failed swarm. For whatever reason the queen did not make it with the rest of the bees. Queens sometimes cannot fly or possibly its an injured virgin queen that cant fly. Always check around the hive for a crawling queen if a swarm comes back. This is were the Taranov split comes in handy, if you shake all the bees out the queen can walk with the workers into a new box. Its important to inspect hives like this weekly because they sometimes dont requeen. Its not a bad idea to add a frame of eggs from another hive in a week to see if they start making queen cells.

 

[jerryse]

Rainy here so I put together 2 medium supers . Need to buy some frames tomorrow when I have to be in town anyway . Going to do a couple of frames with no foundation for cut comb . I like a little for my own use .

 

[duluthralphie]

I spend the afternoon in my bees.

I took 25 frames of honey from the Russians.

3 deeps and 22 mediums.

I also took 4 frames of mixed honey and brood form them. Hopefully, that will weaken them a tad. No Supercedure or swarm cells. I think I could take 25 more frames next week. I left some that could have been taken they weren’t quite 100% capped.

That is the only hive that gave me honey, almost.


The Italians were bad little bees.

They needed a new medium and I gave them a new medium super. They did not have any mediums full, seems they lack the stick to it-ism required to fill a frame.

They had a ton of brood, but half the hive left. I am guessing a labor strike. I found them in s pear tree about 50 ft from the hive. The were 6 ft up in the tree. I captured most of them and put them in my empty hive. Hopefully, I got the queen and they will stay put. I need to get a second deep on that hive. Right now I just have one deep and one medium on it. The medium only has 5 frames in it. I need to fill it tomorrow after I spin the others out.

It appears I need to buy more frames. Maybe more supers too. I no longer have a hive trap. It became the home for the disorderly Italians.

The Canooks are doing ok. Not a lot of brood in there, and not a lot of honey. They have some brood above the Queen excluder. How did they do that? Not s lot but a hundred cells or so. Looks like a lot of drones.

All three hives have started drawing out comb on the green drone frames. None have eggs in them yet.

End of report. 90 degrees is too hot to have to work bees in.

photos forthcoming.

 

[Apis mellifera]

The Canooks are doing ok. Not a lot of brood in there, and not a lot of honey. They have some brood above the Queen excluder. How did they do that? Not s lot but a hundred cells or so. Looks like a lot of drones.

Sounds like you may have a laying worker. Is the drone brood scattered or in one big group?