New beek with first nuc. It looked good on arrival, honey and some capped brood but probably more honey than brood. They carried in lots of pollen and are also being fed 1:1 sugar water. Bad thing is, there’s zero drawing of new wax on any of the frames not with the original nuc. Inspection shows tons of nectar but ver few capped brood. Not even sure there’s much room for the queen to lay, but they still won’t draw wax. I’ve changed out a couple of frames just in case they didn’t like the particular brand of frames, still nothing. Got a package a month later, and the package is making wax like mad. Took some large pieces of extra comb from that hive to attach to foundation in the first hive, hoping to give them a hint…haha It’s still there, but no additional building onto it. Any tips on what to do? Will provide any extra info needed. Appreciate any thoughts!
Hello and welcome!
How is the bee population in the nuc? Younger bees are more capable of drawing comb so maybe if your queen is honey bound and there’s limited brood you’re in a bit of a spiral.
You could try checkerboarding the frames or giving them some drawn frames or brood from your other hive.
Hi Crystal & welcome to the forum.
Everything is relative to how many bees are in the hive as @chau06 touched on. The fact that the nuc had more honey than brood is not ideal. I prefer the opposite.
Don’t be concerned about nowhere for the queen to lay. Bees always make room when they want her to lay. They will empty cells out & organize exactly where she is to lay & feed her according to how many eggs they want her to lay.
What’s needed now is patience, as long as the colony still has brood in all stages.
To speed things up, the colony could use an injection of nurse bees, and or a full frame of sealed & emerging brood.
Thank you, I’m glad to be here! It’s a little hard to judge population, but i want to say it’s decreased slightly. There’s not as much activity in and out going on in midday, but traffic picks up in the evening time. I thought of bringing frames over from the other hive, but the other hive is so new that it only has eggs yet and only maybe one side of a frame of them. They’re still working on drawing wax on multiple frames, but that queen has started laying now that they’ve gotten her a place to do so. There’s just not much ready yet.
If i bring over frames of drawn comb and/or brood, how much is too much to take from the newer hive? And would I want to take some partially-drawn frames and hope the older hive will continue to build them out, or just go ahead and take only full frames?
@JeffH I started reading about hives being honeybound, and it’s interesting that some feel that it’s a huge problem that should be addressed right away, while others feel as you say here - that the workers will clean space out for the queen to lay when they’re ready for her to lay and for the amount of eggs they want her to lay. After more reading about the relationships in a colony, i was also leaning more toward “the workers are dictating numbers”, but I’m new enough to still worry about second-guessing that because i feel like i still know zilch about anything! haha
I felt bad for her last inspectiom because she actually had an egg hanging out, looking for a cell to lay. At least that’s what it seemed was going on. There’s just very little brood is why I’m concerned. Not nearly enough to sustain the hive, is my concern. I also thought to hang a foundationless frame, in case they just hate the plastic, and worth a shot maybe. Have you seen many cases where bees just flat refuse to draw new wax?
There are maybe 4 queen cells started, but none actively being worked on. In case that info helps.
Hi Crystal, I’ve never seen a case where workers refuse to draw comb. Everything is relative to worker numbers. There needs to be a mixture of nurse bees, as well as foraging bees and in between. This is why I suggest that the colony could use an injection of nurse bees, or a full frame of sealed & emerging brood, so as to boost the numbers.
The colony will only allow the queen to lay the number of eggs that the nurse bees can physically manage to look after, bearing in mind that each larvae receives 1500 visits each day by nurse bees.
A great video to watch is on Youtube, “City of Bees”. It was made in the early 60’s by The Moody Institute of Science, it shows what goes on inside a hive & gives a better understanding of what I’ve been talking about. Even when it comes to building comb, that part is interesting, & it’s easy to understand how numbers of bees play an important role.
Funny! That’s actually the video I watched after reading all the material on honeybound hives, the one that pit me looking in another direction…haha
Looking to see if anyone has recommendations on how much brood is safe to take from the other new hive once their queen gets more laid and they’re capped.
To my way of thinking, “honey bound” would be when a colony has nowhere else in the hive to build comb in order to put honey in.
I would monitor each hive, with the view of equalizing the brood & population.