Hi fellow bee keepers
This is my first post. Bit of back story. We set up our flow hive in January with a nuc with 5 full frames and 3 empty frames. The bees have filled two of those frames with wax and one remains completely empty. They seemed to be doing ok as a month ago there was a lot more capped honey and capped eggs.
Though the bees only seem to like 3 of the 8 frames and now they only have a few capped lava and not really any capped honey. So they don’t seem to be growing as a hive. All conditions seem to be fine. There are lots of flowers around and always pollen or husks on the bottom board. Though there seems to be a lot of uncapped lava that I guess usually end up as chalkbrood. And we have had a few have beetles caught in a oil trap every few weeks.
I’m wondering if they need sugar? Or what we can do to help them before Winter.
First and second photo is from a month ago, 3 is now on most frames, 4 - uncapped lava
The uncapped larvae will end up as capped brood when the bees are ready. Can you see those newly laid eggs in the bottom photo? They’ll also end up as capped brood about 9 days after the eggs are laid. I assume you shook the bees off the frames in the bottom photos.
I think it’s a good idea to feed them, it wont do any harm.
If you have access to frames of brood, a frame half full of sealed brood would be a big help, then another one in 7-10 days. Hope this helps, cheers
Thanks @JeffH
I was just worried about how many lava were not capped. Good to know they are ok. Yes I did see more new eggs. They just seem to be slow… And yes shook all the bees off to also help them hopefully move onto the other frames.
Is adding a new brood frame in risky as it might have chalkbrood, varroa etc? Or because there are no bees it should be fine?
Hi Celise, I’m glad that you shook the bees off & that the frames didn’t come out of the hive like that. Your colony should slowly grow without the introduction of new brood. Added brood is always a big help. Yes it can be risky, however take varroa out of the equation for the time being. They are not in Australia yet. AFB (American Foul Brood) is the nasty one we need to avoid.
It just takes time for things to happen. 21 days from eggs to bees emerging. Then the bees only live around 6 or 7 weeks. You need to take all that into consideration. A good learning video to watch is “City of Bees” on Youtube. cheers
You might like to become more familiar if you aren’t already with the 3 life cycles of the Queen’s, Workers n Drone. Remember back to biology the life cycles of an insect. This is a helpful one of Honeybees . Jeff has given you some good advice …
