The Mystery of the Trapped Queen
So, after all of the warnings of honey production and the hope of removing my darned DN4's from my top box, things didn't go as planned! (How unexpected...)
Last week, my top box - the one with the 6 DN4's and the eke - was all honey except for a ripe band of drone comb on the bottom of a few frames. The suggestion was to add a new box below this top box which would act as a barrier to the queen in lieu of a queen excluder. This would allow the drones to emerge and the honey to be harvested and the DN4's to be removed.
Wah-wah-wah.... sad trombone.
I arrived at the apiary today and started an inspection. My son was acting as assistant beekeeper.
The top box had honey frames on the outside, but the majority of the inner frames were either freshly polished cells, eggs or uncapped larva. The honey had been removed! And HM was laying up a storm.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! Where'd my honey go and why was HM suddenly interested in this box!? The one I was hoping to pull off or at least denude a bit!?
I took the top box off after a B+ inspection, observing BIAS and putting the 3 full frames of honey back in, as I didn't want to try extracting only 3 frames at that time.
We looked at the second box which was full of bearding bees and a good start on building comb and some nectar, but not the full box as predicted. My son was about to put the dummy board back when he said "Look, Dad! The Queen!" and there she was on the top of a frame in this next box down.
Facepalm.
The advice of using an empty box as a QE was a sound one. However, we missed the Queen in our inspection and all that I could surmise was that we had trapped her ABOVE the empty box rather than below it, so this week, she spent the entire week laying in the honey frames.
Le sigh.
So, we buttoned up the hive and put everything back.
Had I been prescient, I'd have either found the frame she was on and put it down below the now mostly empty box, or just put that box with the eke back into a lower position; but I didn't. We'll just have to see how she gets on. By the time I'd really had a think about what I'd done, the hive was getting settled and I didn't want to open them up again.
Live and learn!
Running "Foundationless All Mediums with No Queen Excluder". Each box is national spec, but 190mm deep.