Hi Rani, your second statement in relation to the queen is correct. She will only lay enough eggs for the current workforce to look after. Furthermore, she will only lay eggs in cells that have been specifically prepared for her to lay in. Upon inspection, she will know which cells to lay in & which cells to avoid. All of this is governed by the colony itself.
A weak colony takes time to gain momentum. We can help a weak colony out by introducing a frame of sealed brood. Only one at a time, depending on the size of the colony. Too much all at once can leave the brood susceptible to beetle damage, on account of not enough bees to protect it.
Itās all about numbers of workers. The more workers a colony has, the quicker that colony can expand.
There are many factors needed in a colony expanding and Jeff again has covered it very well as usual.
If your bees are not taking up the feeding then there is enough in flower and producing nectar for the bees to forage on so I would stop feeding them, leaving the bees to do what comes naturally to them.
I much prefer to to take a split of about half of the colony so that both the parent colony and the split will recover quickly than a split of just a couple of frames, food for thought.
So what do you guys think of fitting a divider in a 10 frame box and putting 2 splits in it rather than building a queen castle which stays 2 frame splits until I move them out (more work)?
Each split will be 2 frames, Iād love to find out how long it would take for that 2 frame nuc to grow into a nice 5 frame ready for autumn?
Firstly a 10 frame box hasnāt the room for fitting a divider, you will find the 10th frame is a real shove it in fit and that is the reason most bee keepers Iām in contact with are guys who use 10 frame boxes with just 9 frames fitted.
I have already explained the benefit of a larger split into a full sized brood box. The bigger your split the sooner it is a saleable colony and Iām not sure or how salable a nuc is in Autumn as most people are wanting them in the Spring to have the best conditions for it to build up quickly.
But each to their own way of bee keeping.
Haha nah Peter I meant ready for autumn so itās strong enough to over winter
Ok, Iām building 10 frame boxes and putting 1 divider, granted Iāll probably be able to only fit 4 frames per split. When time comes to sell the nuc, Iāll just put in 1 frame of drawn comb or a honey frame
Hi Rani, I see nothing wrong with dividing a 10 frame super into 2 x 4 frame nucs. You can put the entrances on opposite ends.
It will take a fair while for a 2 frame nuc to build into 5 frames. Only time will tell. Experience will be your best guide.
Do you need to be selling nucs at this early stage of your beekeeping journey? You probably need to get some experience under your belt before you start selling colonies because people like to buy nucs from experienced beekeepers. Especially new beekeepers, they always have a few questions & we need to be able to answer those with a degree of confidence.
Couldnāt agree more, to be honest this hole thing is more of a learning curve than anything, Iām trying to better understand how things work in the life of bees, like you said experience will be my best guide.
Thereās no way Iāll be selling nucs this year or probably even next, so for the meanwhile Iām multiplying colonies mainly because itās so addictive and will prob leave them as honey producers. I have space for 10 full hives
Hi Rani, if you want to get a better understanding of how things work in the life of bees, take a look at the video on youtube āCity of Beesā. Watch it several times, or as many times as it takes to fully understand every aspect of the video.
Another video worth watching is āNova, tales from a hiveā.
I understand that whichever queen lays in this will only lay drone eggs because of the cell size.
What should I do with it?
One thing I was thinking is to keep it in the hive with the best genetics queen (very friendly bees!) that Iād like to graft from to make sure there are lots of drones around and no more failed matings when rearing!
My thinking is your failed queen was not mated so just laid drones.
There are so many options and it comes down to your philosophy and approach to beekeeping.
If youāre against euthanasing the drones, then put it above the QE and give them a way out following their emergence.
You can then render the wax down or do a cutout then reintroduce the frame at a time that suits.
Given the reason above for drone cells, theres a part of me that says let the colony deal with it. Workers/nurses dictate where and type of eggs laid, they will eventually change the cell typeā¦ is this thinking correct?
That looks like drone brood in worker size comb. It looks like worker comb with a similar pattern the bees do on dodgy foundation, the stuff that comes from China. Watch out for beetle activity on drone brood. I see a couple of places where beetles could have started doing damage. In fact my mentor & I reckon we can see beetle larvae crawling in & out of cells in the lower half of the bottom photo.
If thereās not enough bees to care for the brood & stop beetles from laying eggs in it, donāt put it back into a hive would be my suggestion.
Ok will definitely inspect it tomorrow and see if thereās much hive beetle activity
So you think these cells are still usable for worker bees?
What do you think of my idea to keep it in service to make sure drone population is sufficient when queen rearing?
When your hives produces a new queen she will NOT mate with a drone from you hive. With that many drone brood on that frame I would take it out of the brood. I would look for a queen in the hive on your next inspection, if the colony doesnāt have a queen then a worker bee will take over but will only lay drones.
In Sydney at this time of the season that frame should be full of eggs or larvae, of course, yesterday the frame may have been full of capped worker bees that have emerged since then.
Cheers
I wonder if the queen that failed laid the drones or they are a result of a laying worker after she failed. Just a thought going on the number of drones in the cells on that frame.
I look at drones as needed to mate with a queen from someone elseās hive and till he mates he will eat my hives honey cutting down their stores.
Cheers
Drawn frames like that can be used in the super. I havenāt experienced SHB so would probably take Jeffās advice.
And.
May be worth having a bit of a deeper look into some of those sunken cells Rani.
Your reply didnāt show up in my inbox for some reason. Definitely take another look today & look a lot closer. If that is beetle larvae we can see, theyāll be a lot bigger today & more numerous. Also look under those sunken cells, as @skeggley suggested.
Only a laying worker lays that many drones in worker comb. You may have that issue to deal with also.
I normally destroy the drone brood in worker comb before placing it into a strong hive for the bees to quickly clean up. However with that dodgy comb pattern along with whatever is causing those sunken caps, Iād render that comb down & replace it with fresh Aussie foundation.
PS, after re-examining the top photo, itās apparent that the foundation is Aussie foundation. The dodgy pattern is only where the brood is. To me that would be evidence of previous beetle damage, not to mention possible current beetle damage.
Oh man, so I couldāve killed a perfectly laying queen and this is a result of a laying worker?
I do believe I remember checking for single eggs being laid instead of multiple. If thats solid enough evidence that it was the queen, I donāt knowā¦
Hi Rani, after looking at the top photo again, I can see that all of the drawn comb is nice & even, except for the comb where the brood is. That uneven pattern that you see in the brood area of your photos is the same pattern my bees do all over the dodgy Chinese foundation which people supplied me when I used to swap frames when selling nucs. I no longer swap frames, I supply them with the nucs.
I cycle them out after extracting honey from them. I cycled two out this week. They are good for honey production, however Iād like to be able to use them back in the brood boxes any time, which I wont do with these frames. Therefore Iām better off replacing them with good foundation.
