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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #7405  by fruitloop0709
 26 May 2020, 13:35
Hi all,

I have a colony that I bought as any a year ago. They are very small, the Queen was laying in a good pattern last year but only on a couple of frames. Out of 11 frames in the brood box they have only 8 drawn! As a beginner I didn't really know how long this should take. I fed them for a few weeks last spring, then heavier Syrup in autumn. Then in December I put on fondant.

They survived the winter but do not seem to be building up further this year either. This week I have inspected and found one frame has one capped brood cell on it and nothing else, and another had about 10 and nothing else! There are also two frames with a more normal amount of eggs and brood.

There was a charged queen cell a couple of weeks ago that I left thinking supersedure was happening but that has completely gone, I presume they have dismantled it.

I now have another colony that were an over wintered nuc. They are bursting at the seems and busy filling a super. They have 9 frames of brood. I presume this colony is normal?

There are no obvious signs of disease that my beginner eyes can see other than this at slow rate of production.
 #7408  by NigelP
 26 May 2020, 14:20
If they are a small colony I would tend to put them in poly Nuc, so they don't have to work so hard to generate the heat required for the incubation of the larvae and sealed brood and see how they get on.
If you don't have a nuc I would dummy them down in the hive to 4-5 frames with a dummy board. If you don't have one you can easily find or cut something to fit.
This may help them to build up numbers.
I would also check your varroa levels, it's never safe to assume all hives are fine and badly infected colonies really struggle.
Also in the past I have had queens that simply weren't very fecund and never laid more than 3-4 frames of brood at any one time.
If that is the case then the "infamous advice" of requeen would apply.
You can search search this forum for a recent thread on how to do this.
Oh and welcome to the forum.
 #7409  by Japey Edge
 26 May 2020, 14:44
Welcome to the forum Fruitloop,

Just thinking out loud here - maybe one for the more experienced to verify - but if you saw a QC a couple of weeks ago which is gone, and now there are only a few capped brood cells, but other frames with eggs, would that not indicate maybe the colony has superseded and now the new queen is mated and laying away?

From my (limited) experience, and I don't know how to type this without sounding obvious, smaller colonies take much longer to build up in relation to larger colonies. Again more experienced beekeepers can correct me but if you do have a newly mated queen that's laying away, they may benefit from a helping hand - ie a frame of emerging brood which will turn into nurse bees in the next few days. It sounds like you have that capacity with your other colony - although remember a full national frame has well over 5000 cells. If you have the "ideal" frame, with 5000+ bees about to emerge, that can impact your honey production of the donor colony.

Something to think about, and of course wait for someone (probably Nigel ;)) to correct me
 #7411  by fruitloop0709
 26 May 2020, 16:42
Thank you both. I do have a nuc they could go into but they have been in the give a year now and never really but up, so is it worth it?

Requeening is something I have considered, the only problem with that is I've only ever found her once!
 #7412  by Japey Edge
 26 May 2020, 16:54
Certainly - like Nigel says, the nuc is a much smaller space so they don't have to waste that extra energy warming it up.
 #7414  by AdamD
 26 May 2020, 21:14
You have done well to get a small colony through winter. Now you have seen a different colony do well, it's now apparent that your original colony is clearly not going very far so the queen needs to be found and she needs to go. If you have never seen her, she might be smaller than average which could make things difficult. Assuming you find her, you will also have to decide what you want to do to get a new queen going so the colony is strong going into winter. This could be to get the colony to raise a queen from your larger colony if it is well-behaved and worth breeding from or to buy a queen in.
Firstly some options come to mind to find the queen:-

1)Look and look again on the frames - get someone to help?
2) Remove the frames of stores from the brood box and then pair up the remaining frames, but spread about in the hive; the queen will hopefully be on the inside of one of the pairs of frames - in the dark.

For these two, if you are not comfortable in picking up the queen in case she gets lost, have an empty nuc to hand and put the frame she is on in the nuc. You have now isolated her to one frame in one box which makes thing easier.

3) Seive the bees. Shake the bees into an empty brood box on the hive floor. The queen should be in the heap of bees. Put a queen excluder on the brood box and then place you usual brood box and frames on the excluder. Then crownboard and roof on top. The bees will rise up through the excuder to cover the brood leaving the queen and any drones behind. A few hours later or the next day, the brood box can be lifted off and you can find the queen under the 'excluder. (Unless she is very small).

4) Spread the brood over two brood boxes with an 'excluder in between. After 4 days, you will know which box has the queen as one box will have eggs, and the other no eggs. Then it's easier to find her. If you then move the queenright box a metre away and leave for an hour or two, any flyers will have returned to the original site, thus reducing the number of bees further.
 #7415  by AndrewLD
 26 May 2020, 21:23
Japey Edge wrote:
26 May 2020, 14:44
Welcome to the forum Fruitloop,

Just thinking out loud here - maybe one for the more experienced to verify - but if you saw a QC a couple of weeks ago which is gone, and now there are only a few capped brood cells, but other frames with eggs, would that not indicate maybe the colony has superseded and now the new queen is mated and laying away?
It wouldn't be the QC that you saw because even if it were sealed the very next day (day 8) it still would take to day 21 for her to be mature and even then its usually a few days after that before she would fly out, then she has to come into lay... so the maths are not right. Another scenario could be that you only saw an insurance supercedure cell and missed earlier ones??? Which would explain why it was torn down.
You don't say how many bees are in the hive but the idea of boosting numbers if you have the capacity seems a good idea. If it were earlier in the year then a NUC sounds a really good move but is it necessary in the summer?
Waiting a another week wouldn't hurt and would give you a better idea - in the meantime - reduce the entrance and make sure they have stores.
 #7420  by NigelP
 27 May 2020, 08:23
As a matter of interest fruitloop what varroa treatments have you been using.?
Some hives are martyrs to varroa and that can cause a similar situation to what you are describing.