Backfilling in my experience is an early swarm prep and is always the first sign I notice
1 Like
Sapphire has stopped back filling and are now back into brood mode - My intervention was positive so Iām Happy - my gut feelings towards my hives astounds me -
I didnāt peek at Emerald as I thought it was going to rain and she gets tetchy easily in unsettled weather.
I put hair-roller cages on the queen cells to protect the virgins from each other - they should make appearances Friday onwards - I will be back home Saturday so can check on all my Girls
2 Likes
Valli, thanks for all your posts they are great. What do you mean , hair roller cage? Could you post a picture.
Suses
1 Like
these are used to stop the virgins killing each other but they can still be fed by the workers
Sorry for the white on white
Very useful if you want to make sure you have more than one Queen You can then put emerged virgin in a mating nuc with a few bees to look after them so they have a small entourage that looks after the virgins until they mate and start laying but on a smaller scale
2 Likes
Virgins killing each other is the process of Natural Selection, itās how you end up with a good strong queen.
1 Like
Jeff you may have enough hives to do that - but for hobby beeks it is an insurance policy - if the virgin does not return from mating flights you have to start again. A strong queen is not a match for birds or accidents.
But then I forgot you kill drones and loose genetic diversity making it harder for other beekeepers near you to have a full genetic range
I fail to get your point, every virgin queen has to go on a mating flight, so the risk of them being taken by a bird is always there. You can only have one queen per hive.
I do break down unwanted drone comb as most other beekeepers do. Itās an effective way to properly manage hives.
If you were to keep bees in a similar climate to me, youād probably need to adopt a similar strategy.
Jeff you really do not understand science and genetics - cutting down drone comb means you are weakening the gene pool - it will not affect your hives so much, but it will certainly narrow the genetic alleles for beekeepers whoās virgins mate where your drones, if you leave any, will congregate
I will run the mated queens and when there is evidence of a good laying queen I will keep the better mated.
It takes a month minimum to grow a Queen from scratch to laying - why only keep one virgin from 6 when I can try to keep six and select the best - in the long run my way is cost and time effective
You say that I have enough hives to do that, the thing is: If I didnāt maintain my hives properly, I wouldnāt have any hives at all.
Do some mathematics. Say I had 5% drones in 40 hives in one location. Itās not hard to workout that Iām contributing 200% of one hive in drones for other beekeepers in my area to have a full genetic range.
You lost me, where will you house the 6 mated queens to find out which is the strongest one? I normally have to have one queen per colony. It must be different in the U.K.
Every time you pull down drone comb the queen will lay more - you are then pulling down drone comb at the expense of worker bees being laid - Survival of the fittest only works if there is sufficient genetic diversity and Queens know they need to do 2 things to ensure survival of their breed
-
Lay Drones
-
Swam
If you disrupt process 1 by culling drones, you have made the Queens life more difficult
Mating Nucs, very useful - can even make your own quite cheaply
1 Like
What is your plan once you have 6 virgins in separate cages?
They will all need to leave from, and return to, their very own colonies.
Ah, mating nucs, good. Let us know how it works. I havenāt slipped virgins into a colony before but I suppose if they are desperate enough they wonāt kill her.
Iāve only ever done queen cells.
The thing with mating nucs, you donāt need much room or many nurse bees to start up - if the virgin fails or doesnāt mate well they are easily pinched.
The nucs can be painted different colours - no different to the banks of hives Europeans run only smaller scale
There is a chap in my club has just lost his queen, even a badly mated queen is enough to raise a reasonable virgin and get the colony back on track.
1 Like
Naturally if you tear down drone comb, the BEES will make more, thatās provided you leave them the opportunity to do so. Itās best to replace that space with worker foundation.
The queen is basically an egg laying machine. She lays eggs in the cells provided for her. If the colony provides clean comb, she lays eggs in them. Workers in worker comb, drones in drone comb. If she doesnāt perform to the colonies expectations, her life WILL certainly become difficult, sheāll be done away with.
Weāre on the same page as far as nuc boxes are concerned. One colony per nuc & one queen per colony. Thatās fairly standard. Iām still confused about your method of housing the six virgin queens while they get mated. Wouldnāt it be better to insert the queen cells into each nuc before they hatch so that each nuc ends up with a virgin queen? Then you wont have to worry about them fighting & killing each other. You will still have the possibility that one of those queens will fail due to natural circumstances.
So your going to make six nuc boxes just so you can see which queen is the strongest one. Wouldnāt it be better to still have 6 nuc boxes but have six queen cells in each one so you finish up with six strong queens via natural selection? ā¦Bearing in mind that one of those could also fail.
1 Like
There are 4 cells very close to each other on one Frame - I did 2 frames full of brood from both hives to pre-empt swarming - yes they back filled with honey, but now a week later they have moved the honey up and now laying brood again.
The reason for taking full frames of brood is so the new queens will have plenty of nurse bees and wax making workers when they are ready to lay, and to ensure I got a few eggs and 1 or 2 day old larvae so the workers on the frames can create QCās
The walk away split did 2 things - stopped my queens from swarming for a bit while Iām not able to keep a close eye on them and created enough queens for me to expand with.
The roller cages stop the first virgin killing the others and when the other virgins emerge it gives me a few hours lea way to set up mating nucs and with few bees needed as entourage for feeding the queen. I can run several mini/mating nuc until the girls are mated and laying - any duds will be pinched and I may have a spare mated queen if a club member needs help
I donāt spend 6 consecutive months growing new queens - I have 1 month and may come out with a few queens at least one will be well mated and a keeper
I was talking about making 6 nucs concurrently, thatās what I understood you would be doing. I think if I had 4 queen cells on one frame, Iād put that with one group of bees in one nuc & Iām sure youād have another frame with multiple queen cells, Iād put that with another group of bees in a nuc, & so on.
Thanks for the education, I just did a crash course on āmating nucsā via Michael Palmer. The down side I see is a mating nuc will always only be a mating nuc. By using nuc boxes with standard frames, the frames can be used anywhere, all year round. When your not using them, you only have the empty box to store or you can use them to move frames of honey around.
With mating nucs, you have to store the box AND frames while they are not in use.
Even with mating nucs, there still must be a minimum number of bees required to keep the nuc going.
The mating nucs I saw look like great little hives. However it gets away from what Iāve been advocating for years, & that is to keep the frame size in an apiary standard. I read that @Michael_Bush has the same strategy.
The bees will make what the bees want - I donāt constrain my bees they have free range of what they build.[quote=āJeffH, post:37, topic:7082ā]
a mating nuc will always only be a mating nuc
[/quote]
That is all it is intended for - I could have used full Nuc boxes but a mating nuc can work with many fewer bees to keep it warm and still function, and be less a drain on resources and space. I put a few 100 bees in from the nurse bees hatched from the frames I originally took off the mother hives. The first Nuc are already building out frames in their spare time - I fed them medicated syrup to help with Varroa and Nosema while there is not larvae - there is no breeding happing so the varroa canāt up numbers - just like a swarm - win win situation
I have 10 Nucās no shortage there - 2 poly and 8 waxed cardboard - one poly and one card are swarm traps presently. one is in my car for call outs and the rest are made up in the garage ready to go at a moments notice.
That sounds like a great plan. I look forward to your video uploads.
You said it is more time & cost effective. I fail to see how that could be the case when you have to buy the boxes, frames & make them up & paint the boxes. All you hope to get from it is at least one decent queen.
I think Iāll stick to my strategy. In the long run I think my strategy is more time & cost effective.
A mating nuc can be as simple as a cardboard box or a couple of bits of spare wood - it is temporary not a palace. My top bars are not waxed - just a strips of wood - I saw a groove in it and starter strips can be added - there is a feeding trough in the bought ones but that can be a cup or take away tray with floating ice cream sticks - I will show what mine looks like when it becomes empty - also you can buy fancy ones where the frames are concertinaād to fit the langs or nationals