I only got to do one this afternoon. The lid was 1/4 full of bees, which is quite a few. It was also preparing to swarm. That’s still a 100% of the hives I checked are preparing to swarm. That one took me a good hour & a half. I removed all the brood frames & replaced them with one brood frame from another colony because I couldn’t find any new eggs or young larvae, that colony got 8 frames with fresh foundation. Hopefully that will remove the colony’s urge to swarm. I’ll see what tomorrow brings.
cheers
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I inspected 2 brood boxes this morning after discovering a lot of bees doing nothing up in the lids. Same thing, getting ready to swarm. Therefore it’s still a 100% of the brood boxes I’ve inspected, I found the bees are preparing to swarm. So far so good because I’m using the brood frames to boost a lot of weaker colonies that are fast running out.
I’ve never seen it like this at this time of year. Sometimes a strong colony will fill the lid with comb & honey after filling the honey super chock-a-block before thinking about swarming. It’s almost like the bees think it’s spring, even though we’re past the longest day & the days are getting shorter.
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I’m finding the same in most of my hives Jeff. Boosting weaker hives with brood. I’m not finding and queen cells being made or in use, even in the queen-less hives, which is a bit of a puzzle to have three go queen-less within a few days. I’m out of the makings for more hives so figure I will have to do a quick trip ans some late nights of gluing, nailing and painting. Having to make my time at the hives in an early morning and late afternoon sessions with this heat and humidity. Maybe that is playing mind games with the bees thinking it is Spring time, they are definately behaving that way. Cheers
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I have some ‘lid work’ too even with a near empty under-super in place below a full super. Masses of bees in the lid. The brood was nothing I’d write home about in fact more sparse than I would expect from even a moderate strength hive. Some light bearding in the afternoon too.
I went into the brood fully expecting to pull frames to a weaker hive but in fact I walked away leaving all in place as there wasn’t that much brood. Maybe the bees are just lazy in the afternoon or maybe I’m going insane. 
Have you got a hive mat on top of the super frames Richie? JeffH put me onto that idea and it works brilliantly as a ‘mental barrier’ to the bees going into the roof area and wasting their energy and resources making comb up there, but if the hive is really strong bees will hang-out up there as well as bearding in the heat and humidity. The mat is shorter in length and width than the internal measurements of the hive box so it still allows enough ventilation.
Re your reduced brood I wonder if the queen is being held back because of a lack of nectar in your area. A month ago my brood areas where about half they are now prior to getting really good rain.
Cheers
Well spotted Peter. The hive didn’t have a hive mat until yesterday when I put one on after I noticed all the roof activity. So I’ll let you know how it goes.
I’m in flow at the moment and the boxes are being filled in a matter of weeks right now. I was quietly patting myself on the back for having nearly all my hives at strength before the 10, yes 10 inches of rain we got last week.
The hive was re-queened less than 2 months ago so I’d hoped for a low swarm risk and in-fact there are no signs of queen cells which given the amount of brood wasn’t surprising.
As I type I think I’ll slide a match under the roof as I just can’t help but think it’s something to do with the terribly humid weather.
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I also have a queenless colony that wont make queen cells with fresh brood. I’ll just keep on giving it fresh brood until they do decide to make a queen., which they will do eventually.
It’s a bit hard going in this heat & humidity. I’m caught up with checking colony’s brood of the ones with bees in the lids. I did 4 since my last reply. 2 were preparing to swarm, 2 weren’t preparing to swarm. That made it 80% of the brood boxes I checked on were preparing to swarm. I extracted 2 boxes of honey today.
One hive I worked on the other day still had a huge amount of bees under the lid, so I grabbed 3 brood frames, I placed 2 face down over the upside down lid & one over the honey frames under the mat. After a few minutes I put the brood frames including the attached bees into a brood box to bring home as a queenless nuc.
I think I’m going to Morayfield on Sat. am, if you need anything for me to pick up for you.
cheers
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25 days later: One of the colonies where I removed 8 of the 9 brood frames before replacing them with foundation started to get a buildup of bees in the lid again. I wasn’t 100% sure if it was one of those hives, so I inspected the brood. Sure enough it was. It had the one older frame in the middle, flanked by 8 brand new frames, full of brood with lots of empty cells after bees had emerged & were emerging adjacent to the empty cells. This was yesterday, 24 days later.
The bees must have drawn those frames out while the queen was laying eggs in the half drawn cells. I kept saying to myself “wow, that’s incredible”.
I finished up removing 4 of the new frames of brood before replacing them with fresh foundation.
On top of all that, the honey super is close to full.
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I note there’s been no more commentary since Feb 28. The weather has changed since then and I’m wondering if your situations have changed too?
I only have the one hive. As @Peter48 suggested, I replaced the dark frame with a new one and it’s now full of brood. My bees showed no signs of swarming. Instead they have been consuming more honey than they’re producing. I think the queen has been replaces as she looks different. I didn’t mark her so can’t be sure. The bees seem productive and there’s no sign of disease etc (apart from the persistent beetles) which I have under control.
Are you finding the same; i.e. not much honey production in the last couple of months?
With the drought breaking rain at the end of February I stopped feeding my hives to keep them going and with some good steady rain when needed since then it has been a good Autumn season for me. A big increase in demand for honey and the bees have been making good amounts since the beginning of March.
I’m a great believer in marking my queens, it makes hive management easier for me.
Jeff is only 18 klm’s by road from me and he was extracting last Summer when I was feeding my hives so the micro climate can be very different even in a fairly close distance.
Cheers Keith
I opened the hive this morning and didn’t like the look of some of the frames in the brood box.
Suspecting AFB, I tried dipping a small stick into the cells but didn’t get the sticky strands. There were more beetles in the hive than usual (about 20 and all on one frame. They were hiding under a beetle trap).
Please will you have a close look at the photo’s and let me know what you think?
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Nothing in those photos says AFB to me, I just see frames being filled with nectar with capped honey at the edges.
AFB usually has a smell of rotting meat associated with it, it’s a very distinctive stench. You also need to shake off all the bees to properly inspect for AFB.
Were you sticking the match stick in capped or uncapped brood and any pictures of actual brood?
There are 3 to 4 frames like this. The rest have brood at various stages of growth. One frame is almost full of honey. The super has capped honey and all looks OK.
I didn’t notice any smell. The test I did was on the cells with no capping.
If you open a large version of the images and zoom in, you’ll see what looks like larvae in the cells. What do you recon is going on there?
In the second photo on the right edge near the middle looks like bits of pollen being packed for storage, the bees add a thin layer of honey to preserve it.
The other two photos just look like the light is reflecting off nectar. I don’t see any SHB larvae.
AFB would have sunken and or perforated brood cells, the spotty ‘pepperpot’ looking brood pattern and the odour. Also any uncapped infected larvae will be a yellowish colour, not pearly white.
I don’t think you have AFB but it’s great that you’re alert to it.
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From what your describing the hive doesn’t have AFB as no smell or ropeiness is a pretty good way to eliminating it. If you are using the beetle blaster traps the top lip of the trap needs to be sitting flush on the top of the frame otherwise it is a safe haven for SHB to hide from the bees.
As Jeff would say “it only takes a short while for SHB to cause a slime out”, but with the cooler weather recently they should be reducing in numbers in the hive. Nothing I’m seeing wrong in the pics except for the dark comb.
Cheers.
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Thanks @Stevo and @Peter48. What a relief to think everything is probably OK.
While on the topic of dark comb, when is the best time to replace it? Also, how do you go about it?
Hope this helps:
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It isn’t really a task for this time of year Keith but the end of July into August is when I start to look for old comb to cycle it out. Select the oldest frame of comb and if it has brood then move it to an outer position. When the bees emerge it can be removed and a new frame of foundation put into the brood box, and move another old frame to an outside position. It is as simple as that.
I went out to Warwick last year and found a hive of noticeably smaller bees, no frames had been cycled out for at least five years. We switched out two frames and left a full set of frames with foundation and one frame a week was switched out, what the owner thought was a bee hive taken over by the smaller native bees but proved wrong as a couple of months later the owner emailed me to say the hive was full of full sized honey bees.
Cheers
Thanks @Peter48, I was wondering how to deal with the brood. The story about the hive in Warwick is amazing! I am constantly in awe of these little creatures.
I’ll make a plan to begin replacing frames in late July.
Thanks again for your valuable advice.
Hi Everyone,
As it is time to start preparing for the new season I thought I would mention that I run a small beekeeping supply store out of my garage in the Sunshine Coast region. I mainly offer boxes, lids, bases, frames, excluders and we are constantly increasing our range. Please do not hesitate to contact us!! We can also arrange apiary services, delivery and assembly!!!
Cooper & Claudia Ellis
Beyond Honey
Beyondhoney1@gmail.com
0452458889
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