I’d like to run a plan by you, to check whether it’s sound.
Having failed to prevent swarms the last two Springs (but I know my mistakes) I’m trying something new this year. Want to split my Hive into a nuc with the old Queen going into the nuc. And then re queen what is now the queenless hive.
Once I’ve done the split I was planning on leaving the hive queenless or a few hours, so they realise they’re queenless, and then introduce the new queen who will be in a cage.
I realise that the hive that will get the new queen needs to have no queen cells in it. Does my plan have any flaws? There must be something I haven’t thought of.
Hi Ron, I can’t see any flaws. It takes a while for a colony to realize it is queenless. I would argue that sometimes it can take 3 days. I’ve seen colonies take up to 3 days before they start producing queen cells. Other times they start almost the next day. If you accidentally kill the queen, the bees will find her before disposing of her prompting them to commence building queen cells straight away, based on personal observations.
To keep on top of things, you might have to split it again down the track.
Actually yes there is, he’s greatly improved & he’s back driving again. He’s a tough old bloke. He used to race motor cycles. You’d have to be tough to do that.
Related question… if the bees start building an emergency queen cell, then you introduce a mated queen, will they accept her? Or try to kill her because the emergency process has already started?
If they don’t kill her, do they then tear down the queen cell regardless of its stage (ie egg, larve, capped)
From what I was reading yesterday, you need to be careful that there are no queen cells when you introduce the mated queen. Which is why I was kind of thinking that I would only leave them queenless for half a day, then give them a Queen to smell before they start building panic cells.
This is my third spring as a beekeeper, and the previous two I’ve failed to stop them from swarming. Made important mistakes, which I now realise, the first two times. Fingers crossed for this year.
I didn’t check where you were from Geoff but Sydney is already warming up. Days are starting to hit 20 more regularly, and one of my hives is very full, including drone cells. There were no queen cells a week and a half ago, we will check again this Sunday. We have a queen arriving in two weeks.
Hi Ron, I’m in Buderim, on the Sunshine Coast. I had to encourage my daughter to check her two hives with a degree of urgency. My mentor went & gave her a hand first thing this morning. Lucky she did because one of the hives was already preparing to swarm.
I think what you’re planning to do should work ok Ron. I remember the last time I bought queens, the supplier told me to kill the old queen one day & introduce the new queen (in the cage with candy) the following day. Therefore I would suggest that you could do something similar.
Cheers
PS, my apologies, I thought you were talking to me. It’s not even spelt the same.
UPDATE
did our second spring inspection yesterday and both hives are super strong and healthy (yay!)
didnt see a singe pest, and there are no queen cups yet. (hope we didnt miss one)
didnt even need smoke on one of the hives, they were really calm…the other one not so much.
i’ve ordered a queen from QLD which they say should arrive on a couple of weeks. going to do our splits when she arrives, and requeen the rowdier hive, and the let the calm one make their own. that one is still a descendent of our 1st queen which is kinda cool.
cheers
ron