I've lost my bees and need some new ones

Sell / Swap / Trade / Buy
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I’m new to bee keeping. I had 2 hives but I must have upset them because both hives have completely gone. Does anyone in SE QLD have some spare bees. I live in the Toowoomba region. Thanks Darren

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Do you know why they absconded? Any signs in the hive of issues?
I know @JeffH and @Peter48 sell nucs on the Sunshine Coast but first step would be discovering why this happened in the first place, before you outlay cash for it to happen again :confused:

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Natalie left good advice. Bees can abscond but in thinking about it you may figure out the reason. To have both hives abscond I wonder if the same reason was behind it happening. Something like the hives were over populated, an issue like an odor from the painting.Both Jeff and I would not be happy to just supply you with new colonies that it may happen.

Jeff is coming up to me tomorrow to help me with a really bad tempered hive to split the hive into 4 colonies and add brood of my own hives and dispatch the queen who is laying a bad tempered gene of bee. If you have any info that we can use to figure out the problem I will get back to you Sunday night.
Jeff has nucs for sale, I have sold all of mine for this Spring.
Regards

1 Like
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JeffH has nucs ready for sale, he is at Buderim on the Sunshine coast a few K’s from Mooloolaba , bet I got the spelling wrong. Maybe 2 to 2.5 hours drive from you. His nucs are from a very calm strain of Italian bees, and he makes sure you better than a nuc of bees and brood, a real gentleman…
Regards

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I had the bees for about 11 months. I put them in a new plastic brood box from Nuplus about 4 months ago. I had a local bee keeper have a look and he said it looked to him like the queens died or left. There is no sign of them having swarmed and there were no bee larvae in the comb. I probably disturbed them too much during one of my inspections.

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Hi Darren, If you disturb a hive too much when it is being built up in numbers they may have felt a bit insecure.
I have also ‘lost’ a queen in my fortnightly brood inspections, all care given, but maybe she got squashed in the checking of frames. Usually if a queen leaves the colony will make a new queen from the brood. Too much disturbing can cause them stress.
Cheers Darren