Can a population be too big going into autumn?

Hi all,
Did an inspection this morning. First week of autumn in Sydney, but they fly all year round in coogee.
One of our hives has a huge population, and there were a couple of practice cups and one that looked like a small queen cell with something in it.
There were no pests, about 50% in the super, good brood… Overall very healthy and strong.

My question is, is there such thing as too many bees this time of the year, and do we need to do anything other than just leave them alone for winter.
(the Paperbarks are exploding at the moment.)

Cheers
Ron

Hi @RonM,

I think more information is needed to help you.

  1. Hive size and configuration;
  2. Is there a queen in hive (or new eggs if queen not sighted);
  3. Age of the queen.
  4. Location of queen cell on the frame;
  5. Estimate of percentage of comb covered by brood.
  6. Is the brood in all stages?
  7. Estimate of colony size (space between two frames well covered by bees from top to bottom contains approximately 220g of bees for FD Langstroth frames. Good idea to estimate in the morning or evening when most bees are inside).
  8. How much honey is added a day at the moment? Also, compared to less crowded hives?

Where am I leading to? Is it a swarm in the making or queen replacement? Former will require prompt actions, the latter probably none.

Thanks for the reply ABB,
H we are done answers

1 brood box, 1 super
Yep, saw the queen, she was a from a caught swarm 5 months ago so don’t know her age.
Possible queen cell was on the bottom of the frame.
All stages of brood, 2 frames of capped.
Brood box fully covered in bees, super 60%covered, but some would have been out for forraging. It was about 11am, and it’s a warm sunny day.
Honey not coming in by the bucket load, but there is a flow on now. I think compared to our other hive which also looks strong and healthy there’s 30% more.

Surely it’s too late to split now?

Cheers
Ron

For walk away split, yes. It will be about 1 month of interruption in egg laying. But if you can get a laying queen in the next couple of days, you can make a nuc and keep it till spring as a spare queen colony or a foundation for one more hive or to sell it.

If you cannot obtain a laying queen, then there is another option. It would be less reliable at this stage as it mainly used as a swarm prevention measure. What needs to be achieved:

  1. Increase of available space by adding more frames.
  2. Colony must be forced to use new frames.
  3. Nest must be broken.

How.

  1. Add one more brood box. Use frames with wax foundation. Ideally it should be fully built empty brood frames or close to it, but small-time hobbyists rarely have built frames in storage.
    2 and 3 come together. If you simply put a box with frames on top, colony may ignore it and carry on with swarming. But bees have a strong instinct driving them to connect their nest if was split for some reason. We may exploit it. In your case you may checkerboard bottom box with new frames with foundation. Leave side frames with food in place and checkerboard the rest. Put old frames from bottom box into top brood box together in the centre and fill the rest with new frames with foundation. Ideally, instead of frames with foundation in top brood box two fillers could be installed to reduce a work load, but time is the essence at the moment and you can deal with it latter.

All this is a serious blow to a colony. At best you may forget about harvest from it this season. But it is better than swarm conveyor you may get soon.
Latter, when temperature goes down you may need to reduce size of the nest again if colony will not be able to populate all extra space.
In the future you may consider keeping 2-brood boxes setup. I strongly believe that single 10-frame Langstroth box is not large enough to accommodate a strong colony. And with two brood boxes all the hustle described above looks like simply adding a third box with frames between two brood boxes as swarm prevention measure.

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Hi Ron, it’s not a bad problem to have, It’s a balancing act. We want strong colonies, but we don’t want them to swarm. If a colony is preparing to swarm, we can change their mind by taking a split from it. I would take mostly the sealed brood, as well as some of the queen cells, with a lot of bees. Take the split away so that no bees return to the parent hive. Checkerboard the remaining brood frames with fresh foundation after removing every remaining queen cell. Check on them after a week to make sure they haven’t started making more queen cells.

If the colony is preparing to swarm, it indicates that they are optimistic about their chances of success with virgin queens etc.

IF your colony is producing supersedure queens, that’s a different ball game.

I’m not all that cluey on supersedure queens. Just thinking logically. I wonder if a colony would want to replace a queen while on top of her game, so to speak. You would understand if she was struggling to keep up, which would be evident of a colony depleting in numbers.

Thanks for the replies guys. I’ll let you know what happens.
Cheers
Ron