Holy queen cells Batman!

With 3 weeks till officially winter and 28c yesterday in the shade Summer is certainly hanging on. A fair flowering of early Wattle with pollen and nectar coming in with my hives and building up in brood here. Banksia is starting to flower along with Paperbarks.
I am happy to pick the colony up at a time to suit you, I am flexible, and have a box ready for them. I also have a few things to have a yak about with you.
Cheers mate

Both my brood chambers are full of uncapped honey except the egg frame I placed in it. I have my flow super on with a queen excluder and wonder if I should put the flow super down a level for a place for the bees to store nectar and put the frames full of uncapped honey on top leaving one brood box on bottom. The problem would be drones though.

I would be thinking of harvesting two frames of honey then placing them back in the hive either side of the donated brood, that way when you have the queen laying there is frames there in the right place for her to lay eggs. You are going into Spring so the 2 frames of honey won’t be missed by the bees and the larger brood area is what they will need.
Cheers

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No worries Peter :slight_smile: just make an afternoon that suits you.

I see a lot of what we call dandelions out in flower at the moment. Someone told me that they weren’t true dandelions. It’s believed that they are responsible for the lovely yellow wax that we get on the coast.

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The 10 acres of Dandelion got cut down by a slasher a few days ago but it doesn’t seemed to have set the bees back any.
Catch you later today.
Regards

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G’day Peter, we came to an agreement on this forum a while back that eggs hatch & bees/queens/drones emerge. I still forget sometimes & have to correct myself. I used to type your when I should have been typing you’re. Thanks to @Dawn_SD, I fixed that up.

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I guess my brain adds the " ’ " and the " e " automatically as I hadn’t noticed and your meaning is easily understood. What I find with some contributors is gross spelling errors that must come up underlined in red as sometimes shows on my monitor but they are ignored, and the enter button is pressed, some of the errors I can’t figure out the correct word. They have a spell checker but fail to use it.

On my way home I decided to set the hive up at home for a while and not at the Men’s Shed with the others. At least till I find the queen and mark her. I have parallax vision and had forgotten I even have it till I looked at a frame of bees and see twice as many on overlapping frames when there is only the one. It is hard to explain to people how it effects sufferers. It is a result of skull reconstruction from my racing days that wasn’t done perfectly, but the surgeon didn’t have a walk in the park and at least he did his best and I am grateful for that.

I opened the hive and fitted the mouse guard and the bees didn’t come out at all hot and bothered. Another calm colony of bees, thanks Jeff.

You’re welcome Peter.

Wow, skull reconstruction sounds very serious. Lucky you’re still here & that your racing days are over.

Re spelling errors: Some contributors musn’t read before or after they press reply. It’s so easy to correct a mistake.

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It was one of my more monumental accidents but fortunately I don’t remember it. I have seen it on a home movie and was a nasty one. Very lucky.

I did a quick hive inspection last Friday and surprised to see two sealed queen cells in one of the hives. In my haste I terminated them but will do another inspection today and introduce a frame of newly laid eggs from one of the other hives. My mistake was not checking the brood better, lesson learnt.

I can’t get my head around the walking queen yesterday, that sort of puts to rest the story that a queen never leaves the hive unless swarming, she was only going out for a stroll and stretch her legs.

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Hi Peter, I think it was more a case of her dropping off a frame, rather than going for a stroll. I’ll have to keep a close eye on that in the future.

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My ā€œgoing for a strollā€ comment was a bit of tongue in cheek. But I wonder in checking brood she might have found herself at the entrance in trying to hide and turned left instead of right and found herself outside the hive unintentionally. Another thought is she was missed being seen on a frame put down near the hive and she walked off the frame and found herself on the stick.
Cheers mate.

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I checked on the frame of day old eggs,larva and brood and the bees have not touched the new eggs and larva. :disappointed: I also put two built up frames with no honey next to it. Try again?

I wonder if you have enough nurse bees in your hive in that case. I never heard of new introduced eggs not being taken on ASAP.
Something is not right I think.
Did you bring nursebees over with the frame of brood?

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Patience Martha, patience. Don’t disturb them too much. There is still time for the bees to make a queen cell. Give them a few days and if they haven’t made a queen cell by then introduce another frame of eggs and take out one frame of honey. Put the frame of eggs into the middle of the box where brood is normally found.
Is remotely possible that the hive is so full of honey that the hive might be queen-right but she has no room to lay eggs?
Is there bees active on the donor frame? Not sure why you put empty frames either side of the donor frame? I would rather see a frame of honey with lots of bees on it, then if they build queen cells then that is the time to add empty comb.
Regards

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Do you not think if @Martha brought a frame with nurse bees that they would immediately be attacked by the bees in the hive and killed?
Cheers

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If you use a few puffs of smoke introducing nurse bees is usually no problem. Just make sure you give the frame a light shake to dislodge older bees. I’ve done it and it works fine.

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I agree with @Dee, nurse bees generally don’t fight, especially if you smoke the receiving hive, as she suggests. I have done it several times too. :blush:

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I brushed off the bees carefully so the nurse bees would not get killed. I’ll try looking in a few days and be ready with some day old eggs. I’m trading frames of honey with my nuke that I started with the original hive. The nuke will have to work less making wax and I’m unfreezing drawn wax to set in the brood chamber as well. Though the bees filled that with nectar too. I’ll try leaving on the nurse bees that don’t shake off if they don’t start a queen cell. In the meantime I’m looking to see if I can buy a local queen. My brood chambers are incredibly heavy now. I’ll still have to make egg room? Will the bees move honey into the flow super if a queen gets started?

I’ll try that if they don’t start the queen cell

Sometimes, but sometimes they just decide to swarm instead… :hushed:

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