I bought a 4 fame nuc on May 1st in Texas we had rain every week in May and June then went to triple digits for 70 days now its cooling down- my problem is I have the same 4 frame of brood and 3 honey the Bees never filled up the bottom box. They have seemed healthy all year Queen is laying but not as much as she should - they have been fed and are still being fed - I have found 2 varroa mites all year and 2 hive beetles - doing a apigard treatment right now as I am worried about winter even though they are mild here - this is my first hive and it just seemed to stay almost the same size all year - do I have a weak Queen or what could it be ???
Before buy Nuc I went to a 8 hr class with a local guy with over 100 hives he has answered all my questions along the way but he recently sold the entire business to someone else and has disconnected from it over his 6th child coming. I don’t bother him anymore. My queen has always been laying but with the unusual start to summer I thought maybe it stalled my start but the man I got the bees from said his all filled up the bottom box in two weeks in spite of the weather. I think my queen is probably doing her job and now the smaller size hive makes sense for winter just being my first rodeo I want bees to survive the winter and maybe next spring will be better. If not I replace the queen I guess. A really old man told me 9 times out of 10 the queen is not the problem so I did not re-queen this fall. I also thought if she was failing they would make another one. I am feeding sugar water and pollen patties and they are taking it all. The seem very healthy lots of new bees about the same capped brood all year - pollen honey stored - everything looks right just on a smaller scale than it should have been imo. So we have mild winters here I hope they come out like gang busters next spring. Was really shocked at the lack of mites and hive beetles - very happy with that. Even with the apigard treatment there was only 1 mite to drop on bottom board after a week so I have ruled out mites as having anything to do with this years performance. I did taste the honey in July but did not take any other than the tasting - it was incredible.
These were two weeks ago
