Is it drone brood getting kicked out? or adult drones? Another theory could be that SHBs got a chance to lay eggs in the drone brood. So the workers are getting on with dealing with the situation before it gets out of hand. I have seen that happen in the past, which is why I try to avoid large areas of drone comb in the brood.
PS @Brad13. Up this way, there’s lots in flower & coming into flower. Bloodwood trees are giving beautiful displays of flowers. The Buckinghamias all over the place a heavily in bud & flower. I’m sure it must be similar down there. cheers
Another way to think about it could be:
The drones are there to mate with the queen (a new queen, normally in Spring), now the colony doesn’t need all the drones around, so they are getting kicked out of the house.
(They don’t do any work, and eat honey basically).
Hi Jeff, it’s adult drones getting the boot. This hive is my strongest and seems to manage SHB quite well and I rarely find more than 1or 2 running free during an inspection so it looks like population control.
One of the benefits of an older town/suburb such as this is that it has a wide variety of well established native/introduced flowering trees and shrubs so I anticipate a close to year round nectar flow.
Cheers
Thanks Faroe, I’m loving the learning that I’ve had to do since becoming interested after seeing a Flow video last year and deciding to give beekeeping a go.
The actions that are required can range from on the spot to months in advance so it’s great mental exercise and this forum is a terrific learning tool that is a credit to yourself and the company.
It’ll be interesting to see during the next few inspections whether they continue to produce drone brood or fill the cells with honey.
Edit, just finished watching this.
A new upload today that shows how an unmanaged hive populates with some good graphs that show a definite ratio preference between worker/drone brood.
After watching this i think i upset the population ratio by removing around 20% of the workers, with the capped drone brood that was present now emerging i may have inadvertently kicked off a mass fratricide.whoops
It would be fair to say that there’s been a honey flow in my part of S.E. Qld., if these wax slabs are anything to go by. I’ve collected this pile at the rate of one a week since Christmas. I got to & scraped all the bottoms clean, before piling them up a few days ago. The top one weighs 6.5kg, the 4th one down 5.7kg. I think 6kg avg. would be close to the mark. It’s a combination of cappings, rendered frames & bur comb. Mostly cappings.
That is good reward for the effort Jeff, well done. I agree, it has been a pretty good Summer considering the lack of rain and what we have got is arriving after such a long dry spell.
Busy time with extracting right now between showers but it is great not sweating up so badly.
Cheers
Yes for sure Pete, I was thinking that all the rain they forecasted last week would give me breathing space, but nothing doing. I think I’ll be robbing again this weekend, not to mention more splits. I’m just going to check out some photos Wilma took of a new queen. cheers
I have decided to become a hobby beekeeper. I’ve spent a month or so researching and last weekend bit the bullet and purchased my first nuc. It’s been an amazing experience so far.
I installed a nuc into my new flow hive brood box last weekend. I couldn’t find the queen and worse, couldn’t find any eggs. Lots of capped brood and a few larvae. Today I revisited to find the queen and was successful. It was a relief! She was dipping her abdomen into cells so I assume laying eggs.
I’m not sure if she is indeed laying or if I’m just very bad at finding eggs. Does anyone have any tips for spotting eggs?
They are difficult, and they are very tiny. If you need glasses for reading, you will need to wear them for spotting eggs. I find it helps to hold up a frame so that the light from the sun is shining from behind my shoulder, directly into the cells. Look in an area which has very small uncapped larvae in it.
The top photo in @JeffH’s post shows a beautiful queen, but if you look very carefully, you see an egg in the centre of each cell behind the queen:
I fully agree with @Dawn_SD. I bought myself a powerful LED torch for the purpose of spotting eggs. It shows eggs in the shade, in the absence of sunlight.
Sometimes when you see recently sealed brood in the middle of a frame, you will see younger brood, grading down to eggs towards the outside of the brood area on that frame, if that makes any sense.
Next time I see that I’ll get Wilma (my wife) to take a photo of it.
A big welcome to the forum and to bee keeping. This is a great forum for information and advice and even has local members to you if you need a bit of personal guidance. I’m at Coolum Beach and JeffH is at Buderim.
As Jeff has said an LED torch is a big help if you have to find the eggs but if you see larvae that is a start, after all eggs are very small so it might take some time to learn to see them.
Marking your queen is a big help when you need to spot her again, they are experts at hiding on the shady side of the frame. The only time I go looking for her if there is an issue with her and she needs to be replaced. If you see larvae you can be sure she was laying recently.
Lots of SHB(Small Hive Beetle) on the coast at the moment with the hot humid weather. Don’t add the Flow Super till the brood box is bursting at the seams with bees, they like to have a compacted hive. Here the bees will forage through Winter and you will find extracting in Winter when the hive is strong will happen, it is a great climate for bee keeping.
Regards
Hi Jeff. Thanks for the info. I heard about you before joining this forum. You’re a bit of a beekeeping legend in these parts! By the way, I live in Cotton Tree and my hive is in Tanawha. I look forward to catching up some time.
Welcome Keith. You’ve come to the right place! And to have some generous experienced keepers living in the same area as you who are so gracious in sharing their knowledge will make the experience that much better.
I’ve got hives in Palmwoods and Montville & it’s a great region to keep bees.
Welcome to your new obsession
It isn’t a mess Keith, it is the way to do it best on the forum. It is a year round area for bee keeping and bees do better with at least some afternoon shade rather than full sun, but with the recent heat wave weather the girls are a little reluctant to work, much like us. @Mrsmcnic really nailed it calling bee keeping an obsession.
You have some very knowledgeable bee keepers near to you, don’t hesitate to ask for advise or even meet up for a bit of one on one chat and a coffee afterwards. You have facilities on the forum to send a personal message without disclosing phone numbers and address to the forum at large.
Cheers
whoops
