I wanted to mention that my husband usually helps me with the boxes if Im having a bad back day (which seems to be often arg)… and he never has a problem with the bees. But they were so mad at us this time they stung him on the eye lid! So I had to put everything back myself. I’ll be buying him a second bee jacket for when he steps in to help- poor guy.
Hi, it’s best to keep the brood together & not segregate it unless we’re checker boarding as a form of swarm prevention. Keeping the brood together if the colony isn’t very strong aids the bees to keep it warm plus helps the bees to fend off SHBs that want to lay eggs in the brood.
SHBs may not be a problem in Alberta, you may not have them to worry about. You’re in the middle of Summer, so keeping the brood warm may not be an issue at this point in time.
If your colonies are making emergency queens, it’s best not to disturb them because young queens can be very vulnerable to getting balled & killed if the colony gets disturbed.
I have a better success rate with emergency queens when the hive is not disturbed.
I hope it all goes well, cheers
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HI @dutchiekins
The general idea of my responses and @cathiemac 's was to do a split in such a way as to make the bees think that they have swarmed. You will see that in the video from the Scottish guy I linked above. All going well, you centre the remaining brood as I mentioned in my second post. What happened though to you was that you couldn’t find the queen or evidence of the queen, plus you had that small swarm so there was some uncertainty which I do understand. I still probably would have followed my method outlined to start with which isolates the queen so you know that the box that remains in the original position with the returning field bees has the old queen in it (if she was still there) and also no queen cells. Just say for instance that there was still an old queen in the original hive (even though you thought there wasn’t) and you accidentally moved her to the new spot and the hive in the old spot has more than one queen cell (which sounds like it might), you can get a swarm issuing with a virgin queen if the hive is strong enough…you see, all the flying bees will still be going to that hive and it remains strong. This is not mentioned in the Wally Shaw article which is something to look out for. It is a swarm with a virgin queen. This is what happened to @cathiemac and to me last year. I’m not sure of the effect in your case of opening the brood by placing empty frames around it in the hive that remains in the original spot, but I think it is possible it may not be such a bad thing (for that particular hive) if there is no old queen in it and if it is still a very strong and has multiple queen cells. You had a dilemma however because of the lack of evidence of a queen, so I still think you have done well!
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Hi guys! I want to thank you all again for the advice.
lI thought I’d come back to give you an update on my results.
So far I checked the hives for a second time today since doing a split. While I am still have a super hard time finding the queens, and seeing the eggs… need to get me a lighted magnifying glass maybe that will help, I found in one hive a hatched queen cell. The other emergency cells were all now empty and being “cleaned out,” There were no new ones.
In the other hive a few less bees (still many) and the same deal. I couldn’t tell which queen cell had for certain hatched but the rest of the cells were emptied and being cleaned out. There were no new cells.
I will keep working on finding my queens, but for my sanity’s sake I am assuming they hatched and I will check back in another week or so to look for eggs or new capped brood.
Very excited that things seem to be working out.
Thanks everyone!
Don’t get obsessed on finding the queen. Young ones are simply hard to find and you don’t really need to see the queen most times if you can see sealed worker brood and eggs. You only really need to see evidence of her most times. I would just leave those hives alone now so the new queens can settle down to their job.
Cheers
Rob.
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I agree with last post. It can take over 2 weeks before virgin queen lays. If nervous give some brood. Best to not inspect often with virgin queen.
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