This is my first post and 14 months into my beekeeping journey. I have been reading many of the posts over the past year for guidance. Thanks for your help. I live in suburban Perth. I started out last September with a nuc which became one hive - two 8 frame brood boxes and a flow super. I am embarrassed to admit my bees swarmed 4 weeks ago. In the month prior to the swarm I had inspected for space for the Queen to lay and had removed a couple of full honey frames and replaced with empty wax foundation. There was heaps of room tor the queen. My error was that I had not factored in a swell in the population at the start of spring and I failed to ensure space for the bees to live.in retrospect I should have split the hive. I saw the swarm leave but donât know where it went. I inspected a couple of days later and there was still a large population of bees so I decided to separate the two brood boxes as a sort of split- albeit a bit late after the swarm had bolted- ensuring each had at least one capped; swarm cell. I didnât do a complete inspection to determine how many swarm celIs each box had. I guess the advice from the forum would have been to destroy all but one or two. I didnât. Today i inspected each hive. One has worker brood and larvae and plenty of food. The other appears to be queenless but a reasonable quantity of bees and plenty of food. I canât get a mated queen from my local bee shop. for another week. My question is - will the queenless hive be ok for another week ( 5 weeks after the swarm) before I introduce a new mated queen or should I add the queenless hive to the queenright hive as an additional super (with newspaper separating the two boxes to gradually merge the two colonies).
Hi Kaye and welcome! Donât be embarrassed about not preventing a swarm, it happens to the best of us . It sounds like youâve done very well to grow a nuc into a nice bustling double deep!
Your split strategy can work, there are just a few things to keep an eye on:
Itâs possible to lose too many workers from the box you placed elsewhere as some (or a lot) will drift back to the original hive. Monitor the population when you inspect and add a frame of sealed worker brood from your other hive or another beekâs if it seems low.
With QCs in each there might still be swarming in the works, so splitting again might even be necessary, or adding another box. As long as there are eggs and very young larvae the workers can make a replacement queen in the event of queenlessness or no more QCs left.
I hope that is helpful! Let us know how things progress.
Thanks for your reply. The box that is in the new location (less than 3 M away from the original location) is the one that is doing well. Lots of bees and small amount of capped and uncapped worker brood.( I am not confident at identifying eggs.) Lots of food. It is 26 days since the swarm. The box in the original location is queenless. Still moderate amount of bees and lots of food. That hive did have more bees immediately after the âsplitâ. My guess is there has been an after swarm with the new queen. I would love to add a new mated queen ASAP but canât source one for another week. The bee supplier says probably next week (Friday). If not, then the Friday after. There is not enough brood in the queen right hive now to donate to the queenless hive. Perhaps that will change over the next week. The queen right hive yesterday looked like it was heading to being honey bound which may have restricted the queen. Plenty of room now after removing 3 full honey frames and returning them as stickies.
If the new queen doesnât eventuate next week my thoughts are either to merge the two. Alternatively someone in my bee group has a âspareâ young queen right brood box of bees (expanded nuc) which I could buy to establish my second colony with my queenless bees and his queen, bees and brood. Another thought I have is to see if my bee buddy could give me some capped brood while I wait for a mated queen.
Iâm tagging you, Isobella @Isobella_Matthews because I wondered if this post was mistakenly flagged? I thought @Kayeâs original post was quite normal, and now I see sheâs been silenced by âDiscourse AIâ for some reason. Hoping you can shed some light on it, thanks!
Hi @Eva, @Kaye So sorry our AI flagged this post, which is why it was silenced. Apologies, the Ai is great at stopping too much spam from getting into the forum, but sometimes misses the mark. Please let me know if you have any further issues so I can look into on my end.
I have solved my dilemma in that I contacted someone in my local bee group asking for advice and he sourced a new queen which I introduced to the hive yesterday. The bees seemed happy to meet her. I will check in one week.
I was also advised to add some brood from my queenright hive and add an empty frame next to this brood frame. There wasnât a lot of brood in that hive four days ago but I was surprised at the progress. One frame was 2/3 full of capped brood and several other had small amounts. So I took the 2/3 full frame for the hive I was requeening
My new problem is that the bee supplier who advised I could be waiting one or two weeks for a new queen now says he doesnât have any other customers waiting for a queen so I canât cancel my order. I am not concerned about getting my money back.
Given this situation I would really like to make a nuc with this new well bred queen that he now says will be arriving in 4 days time but i am wondering whether my two colonies arising from a swarm 30 days ago would be able to supply the brood for a nuc. I guess it would be handy to have a spare queen in the event the queen I added yesterday doesnât get accepted.
Glad to see your posts again, Kaye. What seemingly naughty thing did you say
Maybe you could buy a couple of frames of brood and nurse bees to make a mini nuc from another beek, if you donât think your colonies can spare them? One spring the nuc I bought from a friend was so packed with bees and brood I split it, fed them a little, and even though the one had to make a queen they both grew into strong colonies.
Thanks Eva. I had thought of asking someone to buy some of their brood but I didnât know if that was something that is commonly done. That would be my preference. I will update you when a decision is reached
Thank you also for contacting Isabella about my exclusion. The only thing I can identify as an issue with AI discourse in my reply to your post is perhaps the terminology âmated queenâ. I hope writing this again doesnât result in another exclusion. I rang Flow today and they were very apologetic and reversed my exclusion.
Good point Dawn. You are probably correct. I have worked out how that happened. Instead of replying to Evaâs post via the forumâs little arrow for sending a new post, I clicked on Evaâs profile and sent a reply to her post via email. By the way Dawn, your posts have really helped me over the past year so thank you. This is another example of your sound advice.
I collected my spare queen two days ago and inspected both hives today. .The hive that requeened after the swarm had a full frame of capped brood to donate to a nuc and there was also a full frame of eggs left behind. The hive I requeened last week has released her and seem to have accepted her. We saw her. I am not convinced we saw eggs.
This hive had a generous amount of honey and pollen ( not including 4 full flow frames).
I made a five frame nuc with one frame of brood and nurse bees, one full honey frame, two frames of drawn comb with scattered pollen and nectar and one frame of wax foundation. They seemed to welcome the new queen in her cage. I will check in a week.
Certainly a lot of action since the swarm five weeks ago. There is still plenty of nectar and pollen to forage in suburban Perth. I have gone from one hive to three ( each with a new queen).
. It sounds like youâve done very well to grow a nuc into a nice bustling double deep!
