Brood box inspecting yesterday, one week after formic pro treatment. I could see lava, no eggs, no queen. I have a shotgun patten with some of my brood frames and two full frames of capped honey either side of the brood. It looks like they also maybe backfilling. Lots of pollen and nectar visible.
I plan to do another inspection to check out the rest of the brood frames and take more photos for analysis. What should I do to help rectify this backfilling and brood patten.
Hi Catty, welcome to the forum. That brood looks like drone brood. Is it in drone comb, or worker comb? If it’s in worker comb, with no other worker brood in the hive at all, that would indicate to me that you have a laying worker.
Now that we’re past the solstice, the bees will start to open the brood up, instead of back filling. This is with normal colonies with a good population & a vigorous queen.
When you take more photos to share, can you get some close-ups for us please. cheers
Thanks JeffH. I’m wanting to check the hive again Saturday. That would only be 6 days after last inspection. Do you feel I should wait longer? I was also going to checkerboard with 1, possibly 2 news drama to help with the backfilling. Your thoughts?
Below is a comparison photo. Top was April.
Hi Catty, that’s all beautiful worker brood. Definitely don’t checkerboard your brood while the nights are so cold. Keep your brood together so that the colony can easily keep it warm.
Don’t do any inspections if it is cold and windy, you don’t want to chill your brood unnecessarily.
Don’t give the back filling a second thought. When the colony is ready in the next few weeks, you’ll start to see a reverse of back filling. The days are getting longer with an increase in pollen will be the trigger.
That top photo was April (nice brood pattern) and bottom frame was the pattern from the weekend. Should I pop in and check some more brood frames see if they all look like that or let the girls handle it?
Hey Catty,
FormicPro is pretty harsh and can disrupt the colony. The Queen pheromone can be overpowered by the strong fumes. This can lead to Queen failure and if there’s no young larvae to make a new queen, the colony will collapse. The Queen might still be there, but not laying yet. You need to find her or replace her.
Mike
Hey JeffH,
I got in the hive again today to recheck for the queen. I had drone brood on the second frame then worker brood that just kept getting better and better as I went through the box. I found a queen cup? Eggs and the queen.
What are your thoughts?
It’s good that you found the queen. I personally don’t allow any large amounts of drone brood in my hives as a hive beetle strategy. The other thing is that mites like to reproduce in drone brood. Workers tend to ignore hygienic behavior in drone brood, while focusing on worker brood. Seeing a lot of empty cells within the worker brood, which I’m seeing in your photo could be a sign of hygienic behavior.
Yes that is a queen cup. The bees will use that and others they build to raise queens when they decide to swarm later on in the spring. Preventing that is possible and a whole new subject. cheers 
Jeff, things are changing with beekeeping and one of them, I think must be our attitude to drones.
Sure, all the training based on the northern hemisphere experience, tells us to sacrifice drones because mites prefer to procreate in drone brood. There’s some logic to that; the extra three days of pupal development means an extra new foundress or two per mother foundress. The original host’s (Apis cerana) worker pupal stage is too short (19days) and drone brood is usually at 33°C. Varroa evolved to optimise at that temperature, so laying in worker brood is slightly more stressful for them at 35°C.
I offer an alternative view after three years of varroa during the high infestation period and now in the relatively stable, but not completely stable period.
With all the feral colonies, poorly managed and unmanaged colonies dead, there is now a serious shortage of drones in drone congregation areas (DCA’s) leading to poorly mated queens. This obviously leads to repeated supercedures. Every frame of drone brood removed for mite control takes out another 5000 potential mates for queens.
There are way more frames of worker brood than drone brood and more nurse bees tending them. Mites enter cells when the larva releases the pre-pupa pheromone. They don’t pass up that opportunity hoping for a better chance with a drone. I removed two to four frames of worker brood taking out up to 7,000 mother foundresses and 14,000 new foundresses each. Using only this technique, I kept mite loads below threshold, typically around 2 mites in a wash. Now I use the Varroa Controller with the same effect without killing bees.
Drones are the store of genetic diversity essential to the long term success of Apis mellifera. At a time when our bee population is shrinking to devastating levels, we need more drones than ever, to ensure a secure future for our bees and of course, us.
Mike
I only told Katty what I do myself. You’re at liberty to tell Katty what you do. cheers
And sound advice as always, Jeff. I highlight that the successful practices of the varroa free period won’t necessarily work with Varroa in the mix, particularly in the first few years of heavy reinfestation.
Mike
