Hi, I’ve inspected the hive today and am a little concerned…
The population seems strong and they have plenty of honey. Pollen seems low though… should I be buying some?
However, in the middle of the brood there were a few queen cups/cells. There was one semi-decent peanut, open at the end and then two rubbish attempts and what looked like the start of a cup. I removed them but now am wondering if they might be emergency ones?
There were larvae present but I’m very uncertain about whether I can see eggs or not. There were at least 4 frames full of capped brood with other brood elsewhere but there were a couple of frames in the brood box that were empty. So I don’t think they’ve run out of space. Could they have cut back because of the low pollen?
The flow frame isn’t built out yet but I’m wondering if they’ve got more important things to attend to in the hive.
Where on the frame were they? Swarm cells are usually at the bottom. Supercedure cells are higher up on the frame. If it was supercedure, your queen may be aging. You have the choice then of requeening, or just allowing them to make their own queen.
If the queen has already gone/died, they should be OK for another week. I would inspect again in a week, and if there are no uncapped larvae, try to get a new queen ASAP.
I would think it is a little early in your season to be feeding them pollen (or pollen substitute), but I would be interested in what others think.
Ouch.
Never ever remove queen cells unless you are sure you won’t make them queen-less as a result.
If you find charged queen cells and no eggs your queen is no longer there and the bees can’t make themselves a new one. If there are eggs she may well be there.
Library, library documents, scroll down to “There are Queen Cells in My Hive”
It’s a good read read. Print it off and keep a copy somewhere.
I use Safari. What I did was try to link something else on that page for somebody else on the forum. It didn’t work so I presumed the pdf wouldn’t either
We are very new to beekeeping, having done our first brood inspection last Saturday after installing the 4 frame nuc 3 weeks previously. Since then I have noticed the bees seem really active, maybe agressive, and many dead drones out front of the hive. Watching the activity, it appears as though they are barralling out of the hive 2 at a time and wrestling around on the ground (sorry, that’s the only way I can describe it).
Seeing as this is springtime here in south west Western Australia, and there are plenty of blossoms around, could there be another explanation for this activity other than low forage supplies.
I’ve noticed my mega hives (3 deep) keep some drones all winter. That doesn’t mean the smaller hives don’t but I’ve only noticed it on my giant colonies. Maybe with the plethora of pollen and honey that these hives store they don’t worry about a few extra mouths to feed.
Thanks Dawn for the reply but boy I hope not, we are just getting started. Reduced the entrance to 3" yesterday and noticed still more drones ( 3 or 4) on the ground in front today. My husband says they will probably work things out - hope so.
My girls have kept the drones this year - Last year they kicked them out as there was not enough Forage in August and the queen wont lay drones so late in the year usually
Have been checking the hive again and whilst there seems to be a quieter less agressive activity, and lots of pollinated legs entering the hive - which is a good sign, what isn’t is that I don’t think they are our bees. Here in Western Australia we use the Italian honey bee which is shorter, plumper and a more golden colour than the native bees. What I have seen today are no fat, golden Italian looking bees, but a darker, slimmer and more heavily striped bee. I am really hoping that we haven’t had a hive invasion, but if we have, what could that mean.
`if these dark bees are bringing in pollen then they belong to the hive. The queen mates with up to 20 drones unless she is II . The colour of the daughters she produces will vary with the colour of the father
I agree with what @Dee says, and in fact, our own bees show the same thing. Our bees are Italians, like yours, but it seems that the colouring changes slightly every couple of months. Sometimes they are light golden, sometimes much darker. However, they have always been exceptionally gentle, productive and greedy - no doubting that they are Italians!
By “II” Dee is referring to Instrumental insemination. This expensive process is used by bee breeders to control the genetic offspring of top breeder queens. It is not usually available to the public, although I have had a couple of II queens in the past. The process requires manual extraction of sperm from hand-selected drones. The tiny drops of sperm are then collected and mixed in a “pool” of sperm. A small amount from this pool is instrumentally introduced into the queen, and amazingly she is often then fertile and will go on to produce very uniform offspring.
In natural mating, the drone’s sperm stays in separate sort of packets within the queen, one per packet per drone. She will use most of one packet, before moving on to the next one. So if the drone was dark, your bees may be dark until that packet of sperm runs out. Bees are really fascinating!
