The other hive is not a nucleus. It has all the brood frames minus one.
The queen is indeed accompanied by all the foraging bees. Some of these bees revert to wax making but you do not need many of them to nurse brood because you are careful to move the queen over on a frame of sealed brood. The wax makers simply need to keep pace with the queen and are quickly replaced by new emerging bees. The original foraging force stays largely intact to gather your honey. The emerging bees become the nurse bees.
If you nuc the queen she has no foragers to start with and this foraging force will take weeks to build up to strength. Meanwhile the box with the queen cells will have a significant brood break of at least three weeks and often much longer.
Wally shaws modified manipulation achieves the method I described by moving the queen back a week after simply making the whole thing easier if you can’t find the queen and can’t inspect the moved box very often.
Hi Julia, I would place the frame face up. If the chooks are like the Blue-faced Honey Eaters, they’ll pick the larvae/pupae out of the comb, leaving the empty comb. I imaging the chooks would be more brutal & probably not even leave the empty comb. I have to turn the comb over for the BFHEs, I doubt that you’d have to do that for the chooks.
It’s the house bees that build drone comb, then the queen lays eggs in that comb. If we remove the drone comb & replace it with worker foundation, the bees will draw it out as worker comb. Then we get more workers & less drones in a hive. Drones are good, don’t get me wrong. However too many drones can be a hindrance, especially if we a trying to combat SHB.
We have no SHB here, but I was really shocked by how many drones were running around the brood box, in addition to one double sided frame of drone comb
I am worried that due to the large cell size the queen will continue to just lay drones here so would like to move the frame out of the brood box and into the super. However, if I do this now all the drones will get trapped and die when they emerge. I think I will wait and see what they look like in a few weeks. If they have layed another frame of drone they may become chook food - though I am a vegetarian wuss so may not be able to bring myself to do it
I think that a large increase in drones like this may be a forerunner for swarm preparations, but as I took a very large split from this hive yesterday, hopefully I will have disrupted that process.
Hi Francine, it IS natural for a colony to make a lot of drones to coincide with the possibility of virgin queens wanting to get mated in the area. The more drones a colony can produce at that point in time, the better chance that colony has of passing on it’s genes.
While it is desirable to let the bees do what they want to do, from the point of view of managing a beehive, it’s probably better for us to manage the drone population & try to keep it down a bit. Anyway that’s the strategy that I have adopted.
Bees like drones. If you are giving them free comb to draw that’s what they do. There is little point in giving them the ability to control the bees they make if you then don’t like it. Give them worker foundation and you are in more control. Have faith in your bees. They will not let the queen lay too many drones. To stop her they fill the frame with stores when drones are no longer needed. As an aside. Drones often congregate in the outer frames.
That is exactly what happened to us as the bees drew nice straight comb so we went with quite a few foundationless frames.
Having read up on drones a bit more I am taking their numbers as a sign of a strong collony and leaving them alone. When they backfill the frame with honey we will then cycle it up above the QX, as it is in the middle of the brood box so I don’t want to waste the space with honey.
Lovely. I know Jeff cuts a lot of his drone comb out but he would have a real problem with Beetle otherswise so needs must. Thank heavens we don’t have it to contend with
Looked at it…makes sense…but for me it would be very difficult due to the number of supers along with all those extra honey stores…this seems very Impractical for my tiny apiary…will certainly keep this in mind…maybe bring it up at next club meeting. Thanks
I think I may have made you get bogged down in the detailed description of how Wally developed the modified Snelgrove split. Many of the pictures show him using a Snelgrove board, but he actually doesn’t think that is the most effective split. To do his modified Snelgrove split, you just need one extra brood box (with a floor and roof, of course). The number of supers is largely irrelevant. The diagram at the bottom of page 17 of this article shows the concept - hopefully it is a bit clearer: http://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Swarm-Control-Wally-Shaw.pdf
Revisiting this and think one aspect to consider in all processes is the goal. For a Hobby beekeeper such as myself the drones are not useful…if I had a large bee yard and anticipated swarms and desired splits and mated virgin queens it makes sense to keep a good supply of drones…where I live a virgin mating is truly a roll of the dice…
I did as well but am hoping I don’t have to try it out…I studied the PDF in post 19 on pre-emptive swarm control…and have taken those steps already. We have had a lot of cold and the bees are building up slower than last year. Keeping a real close eye on them during warm days…I know they have store for the cold and plenty of room in the middle of double brood box. Last check the brood was close to one wall with a partial frame of honey on the wall and a full side of pollen on each frame facing the brood. there was also honey frame in box above…it was interesting to see how they were expanding with caution…the Swarm Bandit gives me a little comfort like an insurance policy…
Maybe but the bees like them. If you keep removing drones the colony gets disheartened and slows down foraging. I’m sure drones have hidden functions in the hive
