Two new queens- UK August

Beekeeping - Basics
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First time posting

It is August in the UK and post the majority bloom.

I bought a new nuc in June with a marked Queen. I can’t now find the marked Queen but have found two new queens. One is in the top brood box the other below with no excluder.

The top box has a lot of honey stores (which I was keeping to enable wintering) with some brood and the bottom mainly brood with a small amount of honey.

My questions are:

  1. How best to manage
  2. Is it too late to perform a split
  3. If I do perform a split should I ensure there is enough honey in both for winter?

David

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Hi @Dmorris60,

The first question that should be asked is, do you actually want to split? If not, you don’t need to do anything. There are two most likely outcomes:

  • one queen will kill another soon;
  • two queens will winter together, and killing will happen in the Spring.
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Hi David

I am based in London as well, if you split you need to feed any colonies that don’t have stores, you can split the stores evenly and feed both. That is if you are looking for 2nd colony. It is actually good to have 2-3 colonies so that you can self sustain yourself to an extent. Also you have something to compare with.

1 Like
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Thanks this is really helpful

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Thanks for your reply. Alas one has now (I assume) been killed. So back to one Queen. Fingers crossed she is bred