Hi brainstrust
Hope everyone is avoiding the plague successfully.
Due to our utter failure to avoid swarming last spring, the paranoia is starting to kick in… Yeah, I know it’s only April.
We’re going to do a straight split into a second hive in august, which is when both our swarms left home last year.
I was told not to put the split into another hive, rather use a nuke box until they establish, because it’s too cold in sydney to put 4 frames into a brood box in august.
Is that true? Or is a brood box fine.
AND with our complete incompetence in spotting the queen, how do we know which box she is in and what’s the best way to get the now queenless hive queen right? Do we just buy a queen to skip the weeks of, is she there, has she mated, did she make it back uncertainty?
Hello Ron, a bit early to be getting stressed over Spring swarming in April mate.
Early August would be the time I would do a split in your climate in Coogee. In the mean time I would ask for help in finding the queen and marking her, doing that will make it easy to see her when it is time to do the split.
If the hive is presently queen-less and you will know by doing a brood inspection on a warm day over 24C then check for queen cells or larvae young enough to have the colony produce a new queen. Buying a queen is an option if they are still available but if you don’t have young larvae and eggs a frame of eggs to buy is another option.
The drought up here last Summer was so harsh even known queen breeders opted out.
Cheers
Hi Pete,
I’m not wanting to do anything now. August is when I was planning on a split.
Just sitting at home and bored so I thought I’d throw the question out there.
Can i split straight into a new brood box, or do I have to put the split into a nuke for a while first first?
Still planning a trip up your way once the plague has passed… Whenever that may be.
Have you changed your email address? I sent you one a couple of weeks ago… Maybe it went into spam or something.
Cheers
Ron
Understand the plan is a split in August Ron but April is a bit early to start getting stressed.
My approach is that in August I would do a 50/50 split of everything in the hive, bees, honey, nectar and pollen. brood and empty frames and I would put them into a full sized brood box then add a super when needed, Fill in the missing frames with new frames of foundation if you don’t have any frames of comb handy. In my bee keeping I don’t take a nuc of 4 or 5 frames, nothing against a small nuc but I don’t do it. What I do hasn’t had a failure and I think a little less stress to the bees.
Email hasn’t changed Ron, but have had a few failures to get emails for reasons beyond my control and my ISP can’t explain satisfactorily.
Cheers
