Poll
Question:
Where are my Queens?
Option 1: dead?
votes: 2
Option 2: flew away?
votes: 0
I have had two hives since the beginning of the season that have done well with honey and bee numbers. I have never seen the queen in either hive but believe she is there because the brood frames have been full. As the temperatures get colder an the bees begin to move slower should I take a closer look to see if I can find the queens or just let them do their thing?
Depends on what the temperature is. If you have good brood, I would leave them alone being as you are that far north.
Jim
I think if you have evidence of queen that you should just wait until spring to look for her - you know the essential data (you are queenright if you see eggs/larvae), so you don't benefit any by visualizing the queen other than getting that warm and fuzzy feeling of seeing your queens :). At this point, the only thing you could do if you weren't queenright is do a combine anyway, which might be complicated given our upcoming weather.
I live in your corner of Wisconsin and other than Monday when I hope to take off my feeders and put on some insulation on my hives, I don't think we will likely have a good opportunity for actual inspections left this year unless we get some freak warm weather in southeast Wisconsin yet in October (somehow I think we have used up our Indian Summer days with this recent warm spell :shock:).
The next couple days we won't reach 60 and it is going to be blowing like crazy, NOT my favorite time to be looking for a queen. Hate to have your queen get blown off a frame or frame blown from your hand or whatever . . . it hardly is going to be warm enough to even feel good about pulling frames from hives (marginal anyway, especially with the higher winds expected).
Maybe monday at 58 degrees and calm by forecast is a possibility, but even then I plan to keep the hive open as little as possible and just quickly replace my feeders with inner cover and insulation board and tele cover.
My observation hive queen has slowed down considerably in the last couple weeks (they have a cooler location than my other hives, with much less sun), so its possible your queen might have shut down a bit and you would only see brood and not even see eggs or larvae, so again, not sure you would benefit even by doing an inspection to look for that without a thorough look for the queen herself.
I would just leave the hive be if you've seen larvae recently.
I only see my queens about half the time when I inspect. I would hate to crush or otherwise loose a queen at this time of year.
gdog...........
Why are open the hive this time of year :?
BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)
Unless you have some reason to think there is no queen (queenless roar, queen cells) then I would assume your queen is ok. It's too late to replace her. In Wisconsin at this time of year, the hives should be left alone.
Hang up the "Do Not Disturb" sign and spend more time here on the forum with the rest of us.... :-D
Quote from: lenape13 on October 16, 2011, 03:27:52 AM
Hang up the "Do Not Disturb" sign and spend more time here on the forum with the rest of us.... :-D
Sounds like great advice to me. :)
I feel for you poor northerners. :( I just finished inspecting my hives today and it was really warm, sweating through my veil.