I have one hive that I really don't know what they are thinking. They have swarmed at least once that I know of. When I checked them a while ago they had a good queen that was laying well - all be it just starting up after the swarm. This weekend when I checked them they were just making queen cells all over the place and still not making any honey! I didn't see any signs of the queen that I marked and there is a fair amount of drone brood all of a sudden and very little good worker brood. I have decided to leave them for a few more weeks and see what they do then take action and start adding brood from the neighboring hive to help them out a bit.
P.S: The flow is still strong as far as I can see as the neighboring hive is packing in the honey and I should be able to harvest in the next 3-4 weeks.
Quote from: Spear on June 11, 2014, 01:39:45 AM
I didn't see any signs of the queen that I marked
Maybe you somehow damaged her when you marked her :-\
This sounds like what several of my hives have been doing this year, including my observation hive that I watched abscond a month ago after they just started to build a month after I put the swarm in the OH. The hives have queen and are not laying or they are laying lots of eggs and then move out of the hive. One thing I did notice on most of the hives was that they were collecting more than normal amounts of pollen.
Jim