Newbee mistake

ShaneJ · December 02, 2011, 11:48:56 PM

We'll it seems I made a newbee mistake with my main hive. I have been giving all my attention to the trap hive and didn't notice that my main hive was full of honey and no room for the queen to lay. I noticed this problem last Saturday and fitted a super on top straight away. When fitting the super I took a few frames of honey from the brood box and put them in the super and fitted new frames of foundation in the brood box.
Today I inspected the hive and found 2 brood frames with queen cells on them and no eggs anywhere. I assume my original queen has taken off? Plenty of bees still the hive though.

I have taken one of the brood frames with queen cells and put it in a new trap box next door but I am unsure what to do with my main hive. It still has the super on top and the bees are drawing the new foundation and filling it with honey. Will a new queen have enough room in the brood box to lay? How long will it take for the workers to move the honey out of the brood box to the super?

This is the frame I took for the new trap box. You can see this frame has a lot of honey in it.

AllenF · December 03, 2011, 12:14:47 AM

2 frames left with brood. You can pull some of the honey frames out of the crowded hive and put in some new empty frames for the bees and brood to move into.

ShaneJ · December 03, 2011, 12:18:10 AM

I put some empty frames in when I fitted the super. I'm just worried now that they'll start filling the new frames with honey to. Do the bees know to draw comb ready for the queen?

Vance G · December 03, 2011, 01:17:45 AM

They have been doing it for millions of years. They know how. Make sure the original hive has some of those queen cells you show. One of them needs to emerge and become the queen of the hive. I would make sure they have lots of room by putting another super on and staying away for a couple or three weeks to give that cell time to emerge and mate and start laying without any disturbance. Are there enough bees in the bait hive to take care of the cells and brood you took and placed there? Doesn't look like it from the picture. You may need to shake some nurse bees off brood frames to make sure. Then stay away from them both for a while. Good luck sir.

ShaneJ · December 03, 2011, 02:03:15 AM

The new bait hive is now full of bees. I'll have a video up in my other thread soon showing the progress of that hive.

I originally thought the bees we smart enough to look after themselves but after seeing them fill the brood box full of honey and not allowing room for the queen, I'm not sure they are :?

T Beek · December 03, 2011, 07:35:52 AM

Oh they're smart enough all right. Unfortunately for the bees they're still waiting for us to catch up :-D

There are no mistakes, only lessons. Lessons will be repeated in various forms until we learn them. XIN LOI!

Practicing KYBO, "Keeping Your Broodnests Open" with regular frame manipulations, will 'prohibit' (not prevent) swarm preparations.

thomas

Michael Bush · December 03, 2011, 07:51:46 AM

The signals here are kind of mixed. On the one hand that is a lot of cells for a supersedure or emergency. On the other hand they are up in the middle where emergency queen cells would be expected... At any rate I would expect eggs in about three weeks.

ShaneJ · December 03, 2011, 08:39:05 AM

Thanks guys. I assume the first queen to hatch will destroy the rest?

T Beek · December 03, 2011, 09:19:31 AM

That's the general SOP, but I've read where another can win out. Sometimes its not the first queen to emerge who becomes the colony queen.

Some believe the workers also have a say when there's more than one available.

thomas

FRAMEshift · December 03, 2011, 02:50:55 PM

Quote from: ShaneJ on December 03, 2011, 02:03:15 AM
I originally thought the bees we smart enough to look after themselves but after seeing them fill the brood box full of honey and not allowing room for the queen, I'm not sure they are :?

They are smart enough to look out for their own priorities and not the beekeeper's priorities. :-D The bees want to swarm. It's how they reproduce at the colony level. They fill up the hive with honey because they are planning to leave. There won't be any eggs laid for a month so it doesn't matter that the hive is temporarily filled with honey.

FRAMEshift · December 03, 2011, 02:56:06 PM

Quote from: T Beek on December 03, 2011, 09:19:31 AM
Sometimes its not the first queen to emerge who becomes the colony queen. Some believe the workers also have a say when there's more than one available.
thomas

The first virgin out will try to kill the others. The workers may prevent the un-emerged virgins from being killed if they are planning multiple swarms, each of which will need a queen. The laying queen leaves with the first swarm and each subsequent after-swarm will have one or more virgins.

ShaneJ · December 03, 2011, 07:13:13 PM

So should I just sit back and leave them be? When should I next open it up and look for good/bad news?

Thanks for all the help.

Michael Bush · December 03, 2011, 10:31:48 PM

>I assume the first queen to hatch will destroy the rest?

Unless you put them in mating nucs, yes.

fish_stix · December 07, 2011, 01:15:04 PM

Put the hive back together and wait 3 weeks. Should have a laying queen by then. That applies to the split/trap too. It's best to leave them alone while the queen is in the process of mating and starting to lay. Nothing you can do anyway! The new queen will have plenty of room to start laying as the current crop of brood emerges. ;)

ShaneJ · December 08, 2011, 12:42:15 AM

No worries. Thanks mate