BBKA Forum

Hbee wrote: ↑

20 Jun 2020, 12:11

Thanks Steve, such a pain.
If there is no start to a queen cell in the next few days I'll shake them out.

That is what i would do personally..the bees look after the brood till the brood emerges just as they would if the bees had a good laying Queen in the colony ..

Rather unexpectedly the bees from both LW swarms have drawn out charged qcs from the good frames. So now what's my move?
Has anyone experienced LW drawing qcs on the brood they added?
Allow them to rear a queen or get them to cap it then shake them out and I'll hatch qcs in the incubator.

Thats Quick..lol

It all sounds a bit odd tbh, but perhaps I missed something.

If you have emergency cells raised on your frame of introduced eggs, I would just leave them to it and see what transpires.

Yeah it is very odd, I can't find any information on this anywhere. So your comments are appreciated.
Leave them to raise a queen then? I suppose if it works there will be 2 NUCs for August.
Is that the best option though?

I've put the chilled lavae frames into another recently made queenless Nuc (awaiting a queen coming Tuesday) to clean them up, if that works that will be the answer I was looking for initially.

If emergency queencells have been drawn from worker brood, that's fortunate and I would leave them to it. You may find that the queencells are torn down though or the new queen, if she emerges, doesn't make it. August nucs are not necessarily a problem if fed steadily right through to the end of September and are put in a polystyrene nuc.

Hi Hbee

The problem when it’s not entirely clear what’s going on is that it can be as easy to unintentionally frustrate the bees intentions, as it is to facilitate them. What they are trying to do and what you may want may end up at cross purposes and neither successfully result. There are occasions when it is possible to do too much beekeeping.

Queenless colonies are in a pretty fragile state. Give them a go with your introduced frames of brood (after all, you gave them it to see if they raised QC’s - they did, so that’s of interest in itself) then if that doesn’t give a result, shake them out and put it down to experience.

When we used to work on cars together my Dad always said don’t change or adjust too many things at once if you can help it without testing if it still works. Otherwise you are never sure what worked and what didn’t.

Not saying bees are like a Hillman Avenger, but hopefully you get my drift

When we used to work on cars together my Dad always said don’t change or adjust too many things at once if you can help it without testing if it still works. Otherwise you are never sure what worked and what didn’t.

Makes sense if I shook them after they capped the QC and I hatched that independently I would never know what the way forward would be for next time. Let's see how it pans out...

Steps so far:
Swarm collected 2nd June-11th June eggs
16th June -multiple eggs in cells and on pollen, Identified LW drone brood.
Pulled drone brood and froze,
Gave LW swarm a good frame of eggs lavae and capped brood,
Put frozen Drone brood into an entirely different colony (only from LW swarm I know the origin of) to clear the cells
Saw the LW swarms are drawing out emergency charged qc's.
- 20th June
...

I would echo what AdamD has said “If emergency queen cells have been drawn from worker brood........... I would leave them to it,” Queen should emerge on 21st. day.
As Steve1972 said already LW colonies are generally “not worth the hassle of trying to sort them out”. If you do shake them out do it some distance away from other colonies.

Patrick wrote: ↑

21 Jun 2020, 10:20

There are occasions when it is possible to do too much beekeeping.

I think you are absolutely right about that. I moved a queenless hive around to bleed off bees in an attempt not to have too many suddenly arrive on the landing board of other hives. On reflection, not sure I'd bother next time; give them a frame of brood if I have one but otherwise I think I'll wait and see they really are hopelessly queenless and cull them rather than have a slowly dying colony that risks a massive robbing spree.
I am not sure it's right to push a failed colony onto a balanced colony in any circumstances.
This year in particular, I have ended up giving away colonies so why try to save the ones that have got themselves into trouble (different matter if I caused the problem of course but am I then just doing it to slave my conscience)?