So you're doing inspections and come across a hive that the brood pattern is sporadic for lack of a better term. Random cells are capped accounting for maybe 10 percent of the real estate you find some nectar pollen, and some larvae and eggs. You look deeper into the brood nest finding similar pattern with no real strong frame with a solid pattern be it larva, eggs, or capped. All the eggs you find are in the bottom center so you don't think it's a laying worker and you search for the queen finding her wandering in another frame with weak pattern. They arent expanding, in fact the hive seems to have contacted you realize in reflection. There are no queen cells and there is empty comb so it doesn't appear they're backfilling preparing for a swarm. What other questions do you ask yourself and at what point do you say "I need a new queen"?
Do they have enough pollen, and is it good enough for them to raise brood on. Thats normally my first go to without enough protein they will cannibalize the eggs.. Also though they may have plenty of honey but no nectar coming in, a lot of times the bees wont polish cells for her to lay.
Here are the questions I'd ask.
Is this a new queen? Sometimes new queens take a few weeks to get a solid pattern going.
Does the hive have a high mite count? The bad pattern could be a result of mites and not the queen.
Does the brood look sick? A disease could also cause the workers to remove brood.
Is the colony running low on food? If there isn't enough pollen to feed babies, the nurse bees will feed whoever they can and cannibalize the rest.
Do you have plenty of time left in your season to get a queen mated? If you want to let the colony requeen itself you will need to have drones on the wing 3-4 weeks from now. If you are going to combine them with another colony, the timing is of course less important, although their health would still need to be considered.
If you answered "no" to all these questions, I would most certainly requeen or combine them with another colony.
The pollen may very well be the issue, I do recall seeing a little bit not much. I haven't been seeing the bees come in with much on any of the hives lately which surprises me, I don't recall pollen stopping much at all last year. The other two had plentiful stores today and last weekend. This particular hive I was a little surprised when they made it through the winter, they were small going in. I gave them a frame of resources and brood this spring to give them a boost. They built some but not a lot, only built out two frames.
Some times its hard for a dink to get back on track. If I wanted to try and keep it, id throw a couple good resource frames in with plenty of pollen, put a couple frames of capped brood and a feeder. If they dont take off, requeen, or combine. If it was a good hive for any reason I normally give them a chance.
Failing queen, mites, disease, inbred are all possibilities. But some research has shown when placing a queen with a poor brood pattern into a healthy colony her pattern went back to normal. One theory is to cull old brood comb. I add new foundation every year in the center of the box and remove the old outside frames. I also write the year on the frames to keep track of how old they are.
I put a metal colored push pin in them and if not before are rotated out every 5 years.
I agree with bill, try feed and pollen and wait. Re check in 2 weeks if better all is good. If not I cull and grabs a queen from a nuc and see what happens.
I appreciate that y'all. I don't have much old wax to cull, only have a few frames from nucs or swarm tras from others, most of my frames at this point are only a couple years old
I suppose easy way to track frame age would be to use the same color pin (or other chosen method) as the current queen year when making new frames
Quote from: Occam on June 16, 2024, 05:14:45 PM
I appreciate that y'all. I don't have much old wax to cull, only have a few frames from nucs or swarm tras from others, most of my frames at this point are only a couple years old
I suppose easy way to track frame age would be to use the same color pin (or other chosen method) as the current queen year when making new frames
Could just write on the top of the frame with a marker.