BBKA Forum

By eck, the little buggers have been aggressive the last couple of days. Even my calm hives have been showing a bit of attitude....I think it may be a combination of weather (very muggy around here) and lack of available forage. One hive was so bad I split it so I can examine the quite half tomorrow. I suspect they may be queenlees after their hive stand dive, and or she is so damaged she cannot lay hence their super aggressive behaviour. The bees investigating my strapped down piles of brood boxes and supers (usually a good indication of lack of nectar sources) some have been attacking when you go near them...most unusual.

Picked a swarm up. Quite a descent sized one as well. Found it to be extremely light in the 6 frame poly nuc I put it in, unusually light. It covered all 6 frames plus bees in the super.

I'm wondering why they had swarmed this late in the swarming season wonder if lack of stores was the reason. Although compression can't be ruled out or just plain swarmy bees

Found out why one of my "fallen" colonies has turned so nasty....queenless and broodless. Inspecting in the pouring rain is not recommended...you don't half get wet

NigelP wrote: ↑

18 Jul 2020, 14:59

Found out why one of my "fallen" colonies has turned so nasty....queenless and broodless. Inspecting in the pouring rain is not recommended...you don't half get wet

Do you run with spare nucs in case of emergency queens needed

They have already been used up....I should have set up more.
You can never have enough queens.
I could unite to another colony, but it gives me a chance to try for myself what some of the old guys used to do when they took queenless or caged queen colonies to the heather. The idea being with little or no brood all the hives energy is put into honey collection. I shall let you know how it goes. Probably a glorious failure.

You don't yourself any favours inspecting a grotty queenless colony in the rain!
I don't do heather - but I will be interested to lean how it works Nigel.

NigelP wrote: ↑

19 Jul 2020, 05:51

They have already been used up....I should have set up more.
You can never have enough queens.
I could unite to another colony, but it gives me a chance to try for myself what some of the old guys used to do when they took queenless or caged queen colonies to the heather. The idea being with little or no brood all the hives energy is put into honey collection. I shall let you know how it goes. Probably a glorious failure.

I suspect it will be quite successful , I've run some queenless colonies this summer with queen cells inside and then not inspected.

The observations were firstly that they got quite a lot of honey however don't know if that's just because it been a good year or not

Secondly Strong colonies are not very good at getting queen cells mated

In this case it would be a blessing if this lot didn't t get a new queen mated. Unite to another.
But very interested in how queen cells mate....LOL

setting up 10 nucs with queen cells. good afternoons beekeeping

I needed to make four 6 frame nucs up today with bought in Queens but i had a bit of a dilemma..i only had three hives worth using for brood robbing..
I like to give two frames of sealed brood and the rest of the space filled with a mixture of stores and pollen and also space for the new Queen to lay when she gets going..i hit the jackpot with one colony as it was trying to swarm for the 3rd time this year so that got raped of four frames of brood and half of the bees where shook into the two nucs..two sorted and another two to go ..
The other two hives i knew could spare two frames a piece and that is what i did..luckily i have loads of drawn comb from to double brood boxes after unites so that made life easier..
Here is the four nucs..all of which are doing orientation flights 80 mile away from there current loacation..i move them straight away now to solve any robbing issues which happens every year with newly made nucs..