inspected our hives again today and our one winter surviver is queenless. I had a feeling last week that is was queenless and got stung twice so closed it up before the third bee came and got me while I was taking my hood off. had a terrible reaction and actualy had to call medics and spent an hour and a half at teh hospital.
today we went through it again and it is definetaly queenless so I need a queen in Saugatuck Michigan. I don't want to rob eggs from my other hives as they are just starter nuks.
Second. we have a honey super on this hive. they haven't yet started putting honey in it as they are storing every thing in the brood nest so when I get a queen what should I do? take the honey super off, put a queen excluder on and leave the super? Lots of store int he first two deeps and not a heck of a lot of room for laying.
A queenless hive will put nectar wherever they can, they have no incentive to keep the brood chamber open for the queen.
The extra space of the super is not helping the bees since the population is in the decline mode without a queen, remove it until the hive is requeened in some way, and then let the population build up again before adding the super.
why don't you take one of your nucs and put them with that hive.then when the hive get going you can make a split.if you go this route leave the super on so they can move the honey up. ...schawee
Schawee, I may do that. this is what I have. queenless has two 10 frame brood boxes and honey super. My weak nuc has one brood box that is built out and we put a new brood box on top that does not have drawn comb. the hives are 20-30 feet away from one another. How would you combine them? move the weak one or move the strong one?
thanks
i would cage the queen from the nuc and place her in the queenless hive and let the nuc make another queen. i keep 8-10 nucs just for that reason. ...schawee
if I wanted to combine them how would you do it?
thanks
Swarm season is very much underway here so use a nuc and combine and reastablish the nuc with a swarm. This weekend I shook 2 and trapped 3
gotta love free bee's
with the equipment that I posted above, how would you do the combine? three brood boxes?
I have a pc of plywood cut for combining nucs with full size colonies. It is 16 1/4 X 20 with a nuc size cutout in the center. Just use a single sheet of news paper with a couple of hive tool holes cut through between them. Put them together and leave them alone for a few days
the qeenless haive is in two 10 frame deeps and i just added the second deep to the weak hive. so how do I combine them and end up with only two brood boxes?
To bad you just added the 2nd deep because you could have just placed news paper over the 1st and set the 2nd on top of it then pulled the center frames out and put your nuce frames in there place. If you have one more deep box you can do it anyway. Leave it on until the bees eat through and unite. Then you can go through moving full frames from the top box into the box below. If you dont have a 3rd box use the nuc without a bottom placed over the news paper. As I stated earlier a pc on chip board that covers the top of the deeps with a 9 X 15 hole in the center. Give the bee's in the nuc someway of getting out like a hole or a shim to give them a enterance.
I WOULD TAKE THE WEEK HIVE AND PLACE IT ON TOP OF THE QUEENLESS HIVE.PLACE NEWS PAPPER ON TOP OF THE QUEENLESS HIVE WET WITH SUGARWATER AND MAKE 2OR 3 SLITS IN THE PAPER THEN PLACE THE WEAK HIVE ON TOP WITHOUT THE DEEP YOU JUST ADDED.REMEMBER THE QUEENLESS HIVE WANTS A QUEEN BAD SO BY THE TIME THEY EAT THROUGH THE PAPER THEY WILL EXCEPT THE QUEEN. SCHAWEE