Oh jeez, I didn’t check under the sunken caps, I uncapped a couple (can’t remember how sunken they were) and there was pupae as usual, no fowl brood
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I graft every week during the bee season.
If you do, have you used the “Nicot” method and should I buy it.
I actually like the Jenter method a bit better. Same concept but there are more places for the queen to lay in the box and therefore it seems easier to get her to lay in it. But you can do graftless without buying anything. The Hopkins method (The Australasian Bee Manual, by Isaac Hopkins) is a way to get all of the larvae in the position to be made into queens without buying anything.
The better queens method and Hopkins old method also work as does the Miller Method and the Alley Method.
And if you want to graft:
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First casualty colony to hive beetles!
It was a cutout from a week ago, damn the infestation can be so quick!
I didn’t check up on them since I made the cutout and I remember seeing a few beetles and a section of comb which had SHB larvea in it, so I can an threw it away, thinking that was that. So naive! lol
Inspected today and there were only a cup full of bees!
Thinking back now, I believe there was too much brood comb for the amount of bees and I probably should have taken some capped brood to other hives so this hive is left with just enough comb to guide effectively.
Where else did I go wrong and what do I do now?
Hi Rani, I think you nailed the main cause. Too much brood for the bees to protect. Another thing to consider is too much comb & possibly damaged brood for the number of bees to quickly clean up. The beetles also lay eggs in dead bees, especially if they are laying in honey. Another thing to consider is to keep a bee space between the frames. You don’t want any combs up against each other.
Just make sure that no larvae make it to ground where they’ll complete their life cycle 4" below the surface.
It’s a valuable learning experience.
Thanks Jeff, the space between frames and too many damaged brood are very good tips. That’s why next time I’ll just move enough comb to other hives and just leave minimal for the cut out hives to protect.
By the way these hives are on concrete and no soil nearby do its good in that way.
Now what should I do with this hive? Melt the wax with larvae inside? Or freeze the frames first (the Mrs will move out if I stored these frames in our freezer so that’s not an option 
)
You could melt the comb and filter is to remove the rubbish. maybe there is not a need to filter it the forst time as the rubbish will fettle to the bottom of the wax and above the water, but I like to filter my wax with the final cleaning so it is a nice clean yellow block of pure wax which is easy to sell.
Cheers
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Hi Rani, I have a bin for rendering wax which I do in my honey room. I boil all the wax with beetle larvae in water, the same as I normally do with wax. Then I pour the whole lot through a strainer that sits on top of a plastic wax mold. After it cools down, the block of wax sits on top of the water, the same as fat when a stew cools down.
I let my guard down recently which resulted in a weak nuc getting slymed. That was last week. Luckily I found it before any grubs got big enough to crawl out. I cut everything out of the 4 frames, straight into the bin. Then I added 4 litres of water before bringing it all to the boil. Then I turned it off. Now it’s ready for when I render some more wax next week. I’ll simply bring it back to the boil while adding more wax that needs rendering after my next honey harvest this coming Monday.
Thanks for the replies guys, couple of hours ago I reported the SHB infestation to DPI (as I’m required to).
I asked the lady on the phone about what to do next and she passed me onto Rod Burke.
He said he wouldn’t use the same wax to make foundation as it may contain foul honey smell (it was slimy) and the bees prob won’t draw on it?
No,… no no no. If you do what I do, it’ll be fine, no problems at all. I have a reputation for good quality wax with Burnett Beekeeping Supplies. When they get it, they relish it.
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Great mate, it’ll be good to salvage the wax at least, I’ve already lost the whole colony 
You should make a quick video on how you render your wax
On a side note, I’ve had some honey/nectar sitting in sealed bucket from a cutout about a week ago (different one), I finally had some time to strain it today, I feed it back to the colony it belonged to. When I opened the bucket there was a slight fermenting smell.
Should I still feed it to the bees?
I probably wouldn’t feed it back to the bees. Would you eat it yourself?
DON’T think of the exercise as a waste of a colony or potentially the honey in the bucket. Think of it as a valuable learning exercise. If you put a $ value on it, I wouldn’t be surprised if the value of the lessons learned was greater than the value of the lost bees & honey.
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That’s a good way of looking at it @JeffH 
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Thank you Free, I wish I could have thought of it like that whenever I learned valuable beekeeping lessons in the past. It always hurts to lose a colony through a silly mistake or simply ignorance…
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hi mate, im also thinking of building or buying a long horizontal hive, i did a little resurch on timber also, i recommend merbau , teak or any untreated hardwood timber, just be carefull some timbers buckle or worp, im not sure which ones they are but im looking into it also, if you did i plan of your hive would love to see it,
hi rob, does pine warp or buckle if its a 30 frame long
Hey guys
Wanted to ask a question that’s been on my mind for a while.
What’s the fastest way to expand the number of colonies?
1- making many smaller splits (2 frame nucs)
2- waiting and making bigger splits (5 frame nucs)
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I wouldn’t risk a 2 frame nucleus. It might be OK, but they will be really low on population, and unless they have a laying queen from the start, they will struggle with bee numbers for over a month. The minimum number of frames I would put in a nucleus would be 3, but I would prefer 4 or 5.
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Hi Rani, if you start off at the start of spring with a good strategy, it is incredible how many colonies you can build up to if that is your only goal. It can really snowball, similar to the Fibonacci sequence of numbers.
I agree with @Dawn_SD, I would prefer 4-5 frame nucs. Start off with large nucs, then after the queen cells are made, you can split them into smaller nucs, especially if you choose brood frames that are mostly sealed & emerging bees. Work on a ratio of 1 full frame of brood will produce 3 frames of bees.
Good luck with your endeavors, cheers
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Thanks very much guys.
Well, just before Christmas I made 5 splits of 2 frames, some of them were 1 brood and 1 honey.
1 was lost to SHB even though it was all capped brood, I guess it didn’t have enough nurse bees to protect it and the brood wasn’t as close to hatching as I estimated.
I will not be splitting anymore this year and when I start splitting next spring I will stick to 4-5 frame nucs
Can I confirm your ratio of brood:stores you include in your splits?
From what I’ve seen on YouTube, 1-1.5 capped brood, 1 honey, 1 pollen, 1 foundation and shake 2 additional frames of bees?
I would use 2 frames BIAS (brood in all stages - especially if they need to make a queen), 1.5 of honey, 0.5 of pollen and one of drawn empty comb (not foundation). I don’t generally shake in extra bees if I haven’t shaken bees off when taking frames from the parent hive.
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