Advice needed: Bees take honey OUT from honey super

I miss having chickens :frowning:
Black chic of the family :wink: Maybe just a bit of chicken-wire run through the middle will keep them separated so the mother hen doesnā€™t kill her. Cable ties are handy and quick for doing quick installations and repairs around the farm.

Have you heard of WWOOFers? You can have someone stay in a room on your property and they help with some of the things that need to get done in exchange for food and accommodation.

I hope the black chick survives to be a big black rooster and the hen will know what harassment is all about. :grinning:

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@Faroe I did that and divided the run. Seems to work, the two hens like to sit near each other at the fence, but the chicks stay safe and sound on their respective side. I wonder how it will work out when I bring them back to the chicken coopā€¦
No, Iā€™ve never heard of WWOOFers, I donā€™t think there is such a thing around here. And this is not a real farm anyway, just hobby, and I donā€™t have any spare rooms in my tiny houseā€¦ But thanks for that input!
@Peter48 I hope this black chick grows up to be a hen, because thereā€™s a nice home waiting for two of my female youngsters, my friend lost their old therapy hen a few days ago (they rescued that chicken from the street, cold and wet in the rain, some years ago, she thanked them by comforting their disabled son and helping him psychologically) and want to purchase two young hens from me. If itā€™s a rooster, he will be eaten in timeā€¦

And to get back to topic :wink:


My bees have started to open the empty cells and prepare them for refilling. Now that the honey super is not that heavy anymore, Iā€™ll open the hives this week and do a full inspection. I also need to see if the splits have now laying queens.

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Update on my situation:

Lousy, to say the least. Although the bees seemed to work with the wax we semared on the flow frames, they did so only to a very small extent, simply distributing the wax at hand, not producing any of their own.
The honey frame we hung in there has been nearly emptied, due to regular periods of bad weather.

In the second tier box: no brood, except drone brood.
Little honey, lots of pollen though.

We sandwiched the flow super on Sunday - but as per usual: heavy rains on Monday and Tuesday, so the flwo from sweet chestnut is quite likely a goner again. I am slowly but surely getting rather crossed with Saint Peter. And: since there is now new brood, I fear the queen might be lost. We will check again today, I will report - if it is not bucketing down again.

So far: beekeeping can be a rather sobering experience.

Looking forward to your ideas/replies.

Hi Bertram,

If there are no eggs and worker brood in the hive, I would consider removing the Flow super and adding some eggs and brood from another hive. They might be able to make another queen.

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I agree with Dan, I would remove the flow super because bees like to be compact. I donā€™t like seeing so much drone cells so maybe the hive is queenless and you have a laying worker in the hive. The only sealed cells I can see are drones.

Thanks , will heed the advice, if the hive is queenless indeed. There is however some workerbrood, as you see in this picture (the last but one in my recent post).


At least this brood looks distinctively different from the drone brood pictured here:

Since I am here to learn: why take away the flow super, if the bees arenā€™t storing anything in there anyhow?

When the hive size is compressed, it seems to result in the hive becoming stronger. I would take a super away if there is no Flow of nectar, the bees are depleting honey resources from the hive and are not storing anything in that super.
It looks like you have worker pupae and drone pupae, but please just clarify for me, are there any eggs and or larvae in the hive? Have you looked closely (with reading glasses if necessary) into the cells looking for eggs?

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There does not seem to be a lot of bees unless you are shaking the bees of for the pics. But DSCf0215.jpg looks like a good covering of bees, the red of the cells made me think it was pollen and not brood. The colony will perform better if the frames are about half covered with bees and a lot of activity, they like the colony to be compact. That will increase the brood temperature and increase the air flow. As the flow super is not being used I would remove it and doing that will pack down the colony. Ok, you are saying there is worker brood so there must be a queen but maybe she is failing.
Regards

@Dan2: no larvae, no eggs, at least when we looked on Sunday. WIll look again today.

@Peter48: We do shake off the bees for taking photos, since I wanted to show whatā€™s in the cells. Thereā€™s enough bees, according to my mentor. I had the flwo super on, because there should have been enough honey from clover, sweet chestnut, red chestnut, horse chestnut, lime, acacia etc. But whenever the flow was due, heavy rains set in. It seems a bit bewitched this year.

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@wykradt
I find the eggs difficult to see, particularly through the veil. I find using reading glasses and having the sun shining directly into the cells helps. Larvae are obviously much easier to see. Hope you find some eggs and larvae today.

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I do hope so as well. Normally I have no difficulites seeing them - if they are thereā€¦

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OK - eggs visible, but in a place I didnā€™t want them: above the sandwiched flow super.
I am fairly sure a queen is there, although we couldnā€™t spot her. It it still might be a worker bee laying drone eggs. Will wait till Friday and check again. If itā€™s a drone-egg laying bee, a replacement queen is at hand by my mentor.
if Queenieā€™s there, we will take out the bottom super and reduce the hive to brood super and honey super.

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yesā€¦not a good place to find them or for a queen to be :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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My thinking exactly. I have a date with them this afternoon.

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Quick update:
Queen safe and sound.
Reduced hive to one box plus honey super. Bees didnā€™t seem to mind. Did that on Wednesday.

Bees again did not do any or just very little wax work on the flow frames. So today we gave them a coating with melted bees wax we took out from the box we removed. Should give them something of a home feeling.

I hope this works. I have however bought a classical Langstroth 10 frame hive which I will try parallel to the Flow Hive and see what works best for me. We are taking an offspring chez my mentor as we speak.

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Just for completion, in case anyone wonders: The little black chick grew up to be a striped HEN, laying eggs in the meantime.


She, now named Undine, did struggle to find her place in the flock, is still shy and obviously low-ranked, but she manages. The hen right in front of her, Lissy; was the one that tried to kill her.
(Donā€™t judge the looks of my chickyard, we are just at the end of winter, waiting for the first green to show up.)
end of OT

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