Hello Rusty
What a journey this has been so far, thought I would post an update even though the saga continues.
Firstly, the first split of the hive is a huge success, they have already produced 11kg of honey for us, and I have added a second super. They are really working hard and clearly have a very strong queen.
The second split has been emotionally challenging. The person who I offered the hive to (I didn’t want more) never fetched them as promised, so the foragers would have returned to the old hive, that would have affected them, so I had to keep feeding them.
They very quickly produced three queen cells, so all was looking good, and I was checking on them twice weekly to see that they had food and the progress toward queening.
One queen cell then opened on the side, thus indicating that another queen had destroyed that un-hatched queen, but I could find no queen in the hive at all. A week later that opened queen cell had been completely broken down, but the other two queen cells were still closed, and still no queen, nor any eggs in sight.
I waited another two weeks, then found that the one remaining queen cell was opened on the tip, and the other had turned dark in colour. Still no queen nor any sign of a queen.
The numbers of bees seemed to be dwindling, so I decided to replace two of the frames with frames from a different hive, with eggs, brood and young larvae, hoping that they will use that to try and queen.
They built one queen cell from that, but at the same time I noted that I clearly had laying workers. Multiple eggs in cells and many of the eggs on the sides of cells and not on the bottom of the cells, and all over the place, not just here and there.
By this time I noticed that they had mites. My daughter and I would examine each frame carefully every time we checked the hive, and any bee that had a mite on it’s thorax, we would destroy. Sometimes we would find one or two, sometimes many more.
For me, this put an end to the option of combining this swarm with another to save the remaining bees. After some research I concluded it wouldn’t be a good idea to introduce laying workers into another swarm. I resolved myself to see this swarm die out slowly. I kept on feeding, and one last time added a frame of brood.
On Tuesday 16 December I went to observe all my swarms late in the evening, and to my horror, outside this small swarm was littered with dead bees, I thought the end had come, but it was too late to open and check them.
Wednesday evening I opened them, and they were really ‘buzzing’ with activity, whereas previously they had been very ‘lazy’ when checking them. This was clearly a good sign, and surprisingly, they had eventually queened – two months after the split. Excessive eggs had been cleared out, dead brood had been removed and handful of young larvae and eggs.
My focus now shifts to ensuring that they are strong enough to survive the winter. The last two times I have checked them, only found one mite! Good news. Their numbers are still dwindling though due to lack of reproduction for the last two months.
This is by far the biggest queen I have ever seen!
My question after all this is how many frames of brood can I now add from a different hive to boost their numbers quicker. I estimate there may be about 4 cups of bees in the hive, so I need to ensure that they have the staff to tend the brood I insert. I’m guessing maximum of two frames with as much capped brood as possible, and do this twice, about three weeks apart.
Kind regard
Peter
Peter,
The queen cell that opened on the tip was your new queen, but new virgin queens are hard to see because they remain small and nondescript until they mate and their queenly hormones begin to flow. That’s probably why you didn’t see her. Also, it takes a good while for a new queen to start laying, weeks, especially if the weather is bad. When she first starts to lay she may lay multiple eggs as well. It takes time to get her life sorted out.
If you are seeing multiple mites on the outside of bees, you have a serious mite problem. Most of the mites are hidden in the capped brood or under the bees’ abdominal plates. What you see is just the tip of the iceberg, so consider that in your management strategy.
Anyway, when adding frames of brood, be sure to consider the donor colony and make sure you are not shorting them; that would be my primary concern. The receiving colony must have enough bees to completely cover the brood, so your idea of staggering the introduction is a good one. With only a few cups of bees, you might want to start with just one frame. Any they can’t cover will be abandoned, and it’s a shame to waste them.
Hello Rusty and Readers,
These fires on our mountain range are bad – 8 homes destroyed and much more damage. I can’t begin to imagine the loss of wildlife in the process. It’s in a fire like this many years ago where my father lost all his hives, that was a very sad day for our family, that is when he quit beekeeping.
Some feedback regarding this split is that the hive is thriving and now working on all 10 frames in the hive. I introduced one frame of capped brood from another hive, then a week later another two frames which were not full (from a different hive). I will add a super in the next few weeks and will then leave them for the winter.
Regarding the mites … I carefully examined the hive I split them from and found no sign of mites at all, which was good news. In the young hive there is no drone brood and the mite count is down. The last time I checked I didn’t see any sign of mites.
I chatted with a local specialist and his advice was to leave the mite treatment and see how the bees deal with it first, but keep monitoring it. Seems like the bees are dealing with the mites well enough for me to not intervene with chemicals at this stage.
Kind regards
Peter
