Thats what i thought and just because they have made it doesnt mean the queen is going to lay in there thats why i left it. if it was all capped i might have done something there but for now it can stay 
. funny little things they are. Some of the drones were chewing the caps off today and heads were starting to poke out too.
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I’ve just done my next inspection. The bees were really calm and it was pretty interesting to see the progress they have made.
So now that the super is on i had all frames int he super with half foundation sheets for them to start on. All of these foundation sheets were drawn out and they were starting to build them down to complete the frame.
In the brood box it was packed with bees. the very outside frame was pretry much fully capped honey. what i did with this frame was swapped it with a frame in the super and kept all the bees on it to help them move the honey up to the super.
All the middle frames say 8-9 frames were packed with brood, grubs, eggs and pollen. i was very happy with how it was looking. a few of the frames still had a line of honey stored above all the brood which is why im trying to entice them into the super a bit more to store the honey.
on the other edge there and maybe 1 frame in there was lots of drone brood. i wish i took photos. i would say easy half the frame on both sides was drone brood. (not sure if this is too much drone brood)
I also got for Christmas a “hive heart” from my wife so i put that in also. apparently it tells you when they are going to swarm but i dont really know how they came up with that? this is the data it gives me. I mean they have room to expand but if they are going to swarm i do have a 4 frame nuc hive that i would prefer to do a split into if thats a better option? then again i would have to take the super off wouldnt i?
i also noticed at the front of the hive on the ground found a few white bees? im guessing a small amount of this is just normal? guessing they are bees that just didnt make the forming process?
I didnt spot the queen this time around but was happy with how the hive looked. and i also couldnt see the swarm cell this time so not sure if they got rid of it.
Im doing a course on the 12th so hopefully that gets me that little bit extra info i need.
Happy New Year everyone.
Hi John, the bees will always want to store honey close to the brood and will only store honey in the super when they are out of room next to the brood.
From what you are saying the colony is going along well but the bead white bees could be a dose of chalk brood possibly. I have had a bit of chalk brood recently as my hives are under stress because of the bush fires and lack of nectar about, I’m now back to feeding some of the hives.
Don’t expect the bees to store honey in the super till there is no cells left closer to the brood.
Cheers
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your reply. Yeah i only noticed a few white bees. sort of doesnt look like chalk just really young. i had a closer look and they are possibly drones from what i can tell? not too concerned as it wasnt many but just interesting to know whats going on.
good to know about the honey also. i wont move any more frames up then and let them do it when the time comes for them to create extra room.
all a part of the journey
Cheers
Keep an eye on the dead bees and chalk brood only hits when the larvae is close to being capped in its development. If the number of dead bees becomes greater then it needs looking into. The last pic looks more like a worker back side but it isn’t a pic I could be certain about. What I would do thou is do a brood inspection looking in the brood cells and on the base board to get a better idea of the mortality rate.
Cheers
Thanka for that info peter i will definitely do that. i only opened the hive up on the 31st so dont want to go back in too early. as for the white dead bees i would say i have only seen 5 or 6 so far. i like to go to the hive every day and just see how they are acting so i will keep a close eye on it. having a look at pictures of chalk brood it doesnt really look like it i dont think? i could be completely wrong and when i did the inspection i saw big grubs and everything looked pretty healthy. maybe the inspection before on chistmas eve it started raining (of course it did) could that have affected some of the brood maybe it got too cold on a few frames i had out?
this was them today while i was out there.
One of my hives that appears from the outside to be very busy but it has chalk brood, Chalk brood doesn’t effect all the brood from my experience, at its worst it killed about 5% of the brood randomly. Have you seen any on the cor-flute?
Chalk brood can be caused by the brood being exposed to cold but it can also be caused by stress to the colony by something as simple as relocating your hive.
Cheers
I havent Peter as i have my hive on the hive doctor smart base. i could pull out the pest trays tomorrow and look up from the bottom and have a look in there. see if i can see any laying on the bottom board.
After looking at google and photos it sort of looks like its the final day before the bee emerged that its at just comparing. like they are fully formed and dont look like mummies and arent hard? anyways i will keep an eye on it and let you know how i go. the ants clean the dead bees out overnight from the ground so tomorrow i will get a good idea of how many are appearing each day. zoomed in on a couple of photos Thanks Peter
They are both pics of worker bee and well formed. It will be interesting to here what the issue is mate.
Hi Peter,
Must have just been a 1 off. maybe some of them got a bit cold with the rain or something? or just naturally didnt develope. in the 4 days since this i havent seen any dead white bees now. i will be doing my inspection on thursday this week so i will have a look down the bottom and see if i can notice anything. Also i will be setting up my 2nd hive to get it all ready for another Nuc im getting on saturday. This 2nd hive i will be setting up with a 4 frame flow hybrid super. Then i have a 3rd hive painted ready to go but still undecided how i want to start this hive whether i try a split or get a swarm or another nuc (all of them are 10frame brood boxes)
Hey John, Your describing more and more like it is chalk brood, I had that maybe a year ago when I relocated on of my hives. I was lucky enough to have a DPI guy who I had contact with and when he was passing by he looked at the mummies I had in my freezer as well as the hive itself. A really helpful time with ‘un-official’ as well as common sense advice. He confirmed what I suspected but told me that chalk brood is more often caused by stress in the colony than the colony getting cold. He said it can even be caused by simply moving a hive - which I had done 3 weeks previously. He also said it may appear to be a one-off but expect to to come back in waves, which it has, the hive can have no symptoms for weeks between events, then lots on the cor-flute for a few days then nothing again. Bees don’t handle stress as well as we guess. The spores of chalk brood can last for a few years in a hive.
Bees can handle cold much easier than getting wet, but from the pic they look to be a day or so each side of emerging. If it is chalk brood then it is not thru bad hive management so don’t feel it is something you have done wrong. There are things to help the hive thru the problem, like re-queening the hive and switching out brood frames but there is no magic bullet that I have found successful.
Cheers
I have one of these too. Theyre fun and can get a bit obsesive :). However the first days that I installed it, it gave me a swarm signal too, but I think that was due to the contrast between the in-hive ambience and that outside the hive when the device was powered up. I understand that swarm signals are based on the sound frequency in the hive.
I think thats what has done it because its looking pretty consistent now. like clock work almost. pretty interesting actually i have to say
I did another inspection today. looking really good. brood is packed and they are filling up the super. getting very close to hopefully getting my first harvest. maybe this rain thats coming will bring on some more nectar but the girls are doing well so far.
i have 2 more nucs coming on sunday for my 2 other hives to get them started.
here is a few photos from today
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