I ended up performing a split last night (Jeff and Pete were scaring me). Managed to find the queen on the 2nd frame I pulled out, so made sure she stayed in the parent hive.
Lighting wasn’t the best as it was late afternoon, but I’m hoping that I transferred a frame with eggs… Will check in a weeks time for queen cells.
I don’t have a spare boxes, so ended up using a corflute nuc box. Only had 4 frames of foundation to use. So it’s a 4 frame queenless nuc for the time being with 3 frames of capped brood and 1 with BIAS.
I have 10 frame hives - much to my back’s discomfort
I’ll report back in a weeks time.
What’s the chances of a queen getting mated at part way through Autumn in Perth?
There is every chance the virgin queen will mate even in February. Bees react to the climatic conditions, available nectar and pollen and not the month of the year. maybe your having Spring type conditions like I’m having now and my thinking is that if a colony has a mind set towards swarming they also figure the the off spring virgin queen will find enough drones when they are needed.
I’m doing more splits now than I did this past Spring when I was in a drought and a nectar dearth.
Cheers mate
Hi mate, looking at my hives plenty of drones about so should be a good mating flight.
Did you find any swarm cells? If not I wouldn’t have split.
With this warm humid weather we are having here in Perth bearding will happen and is not necessarily a lead up to swarming. Sometimes istening to advice from people in different climates is worth listening to but not necessarily taking.
Seriously, you don’t see the need to do a split till you find queen cells?
Each for themselves to decide if a split is in order and from what Fred described JeffH and I individually gave the same advice on what he described. With the absence of local input Fred made his own call on the advice given.
Sorry skeggs, majority won on this… But then again, I’m of the opinion that by the time I discover swarm cells, I may have left it too late…(but it would save on time looking for eggs/ newly hatched larvae, that’s for sure). Then again, I’d rather err on the side of caution when it comes to swarm tendencies.
I will ‘take’ that advice for next time
Hopefully they don’t get booted out come a months time…
Although skeggley has a valid point, I think you done the right thing Fred.
Local advice is handy when you find it, but it can also be tricky. Two hives in the some yard can behave completely opposite to each other when you expect them to behave the same. Micro climate of each hive, food sources, genetics…
Go get some boxes, and paint them, and keep some spares You now have three hives, right? Start thinking about retiring your day job, call the graphic designer to get those labels ready, ask your supplier if there is a discount if you buy 10 pallets of jars instead of 1… you’re gonna elbow out Capilano from the Coles shelves…
Just to clarify, the advice received from the others, in my opinion, was sound and I have seen swarms around this time of the season in the past just not this year yet.
We are in a good flow at the moment and with the humidity hindering the dewatering process, I harvested last weekend and the honey is runny, I calibrated my refractometer and tested, 17%wc. My other hives which were drained last month are full of uncapped honey so I’m thinking of adding another super but really need to inspect before I do. Smokeless inspections have not been fun in the past…
I have also set out all my spare boxes around the yard scented with lemon grass oil. I have not seen scouts interested so am not too worried about swarming just yet.
My main concern for your split would be reserves for when this flow wanes.
Of interest when there were the bush fires here there was a lot of smoke in the air and my bees were not at all happy, So I decided to do some research but believed using a smoker was a no-no. So I went for the use of a smoker on the Queensland Gov site and got confusing info so I then phoned my local fire brigade and so happen the fire captain is also a bee keeper. Here, in Queensland, a smoker can be used in a total fire ban provided the smoker is lit up in a confined space, like a lawn locker or the garage, it must be closed when in the open at all times. It might be worth checking with your local brigade about that issue to hear what they have to say.
Cheers
Maybe so however the sign at the bottom of the hill saying ‘Any sign of fire call 000’ tells me not to.
And, you’re right forage is available during winter but a week of rain can seriously lower stores.
And yes I do remember what rain is.
This would be my dilemma. What would you do? Inspect during winter to check for honey stores? When I had to feed I had to check and top up frequently, and hate to have to do that in winter.
Hi mate, I’ve found it’s the smaller colony’s, like nucs, that struggle to carry stores through winter and wax moth early Spring. Having the 2 brood boxes, being predominantly reliant on native flora like yourself, helps. I confess I have left Flow supers on over winter, hence their manky colour, but haven’t really seen these stores dwindle too much. Old school methods like watching the entrance and hefting the hive are my methods, minimal intervention.
I’ll never forget how light the hive was when the stores were depleted.
Autumn is a great time for me as I’m able to use smoke and gauge the colony’s strength without a venomous cloud of angry demons hell bent on infiltrating my force field and seeing me off with my tail between my legs at any cost… And anyone else in the general vicinity.
Having hybrid supers also helps as usually I have honey frames to assist if required.
It’s been a while since we had a wet season, the dam last overflowed in ‘96.
There, I’ve said it.
Edit. Typo.
I have wondered about the hybrid supers, after they have gone through a season of use do you find the bees treat all the frames equally in using them? Your thoughts on a hybrid as an option? Any pit falls with them?
Cheers
@Peter48 They are invaluable insurance during dearths. They can also be manipulated for cut comb if that’s what you want. Plus they can help cycling frames as part of swarm management.
The bees preferentially build out the traditional frames in my experience but not wholly at the expense of the FF, so you will get a harvest without issues (esp in your neck of the woods).
Hybrids are also lighter…by just a little but enough to be noticed.
I’d recommend a hybrid to anyone, either as the main Super or a second.
Thanks for the feed back Alan, I’ve had a few people ask me who haven’t bought a hive yet for my opinion about them. It is good to hear from someone with first hand experience about them. I have four Flow hives in my apiary but they are all full Flow Supers so I really don’t have a comparrison about if the bees prefer natural comb over the Flow Frames once the Flow Frames have been used long enough that the bees get over their initial disliking of them.
Cheers
Inspected the new nuc (queenless) yesterday because I was extracting and thought… why not? May have been a bit premature…
Since I had better light, I confirmed the frame which I thought had eggs actually doesn’t… but managed to find another frames with 2 queen cells commencing. 1 of them is definitely charged with a very very small larvae.
Should I add another frame of BIAS to increase the chances of a strong mate-able queen? I only plan to inspect one more time (possibly this coming weekend), then leave the nuc alone for 4 weeks.
Will check in a weeks time for queen cells.
You now have three hives, right? Start thinking about retiring your day job, call the graphic designer to get those labels ready, ask your supplier if there is a discount if you buy 10 pallets of jars instead of 1… you’re gonna elbow out Capilano from the Coles shelves… 
