ok just went to see a couple of my hives at a near by farm and i got looking in the top deep and i came across 4 new queen cells, looked in side of the cells and there were, i would have to say 3 to 4 day old larva. now that got me thinking what is wrong. i thought maybe some thing happened to the queen but i found her. she is laying great! great brood pattern. every thing looks great and healthy from what i can see. it's getting to the end of the season around here. what i think i should do is get those cells out. right? sense i know that queen is laying good. just lil nervous.
They invariably know something you don't. Are they on the bottom or sides of the frames? Is there a flow on and they're feeling crowded? Whatever it is consider either splitting the hive or stealing the queen with 3 or 4 frames of brood honey and pollen and starting a nuc, and letting the hive raise a new queen. Extra nucs and young queens are something I never get tired of.
Don't remove the queen cells. If they are going to swarm, you will cause the hive to be queenless by removing the queen cells. As Coates suggests, the best thing is to either leave them alone or make a split. I know it's late in the year for a split to survive but at least you will have a reserve queen in case the original hive fails to get a new mated queen.
I would go ahead and make the split and then combine back closer to the fall if they dont build up rather quickly.
D Coates the cells are on the sides, thank you very much for info... going for it , making split. lets see what happens. just hope there's still enough drones around to get er dun :-D if there's not, i think i might just join them up with another 5 frame and make double then bring them into the garage for winter. post back down the line for update on how they did. thanks again for the info Happy beekeeping :bee:
Quote from: kbee on August 06, 2011, 07:53:25 AM
bring them into the garage for winter.
How are your bees going to get in and out of the garage?
ya i got a back window I'm going to make a stand on the inside so that the bottom entrance is going out of the bottom of window when cracked open about 2 inches the I'll block off the the two sides of the window so that they can't come in the garage. almost like installing a ac in window... what i do for my bees :-D. and that garage is not heated so its just like being out side but no wind