BIG MISTAKE

papabear · April 01, 2007, 11:40:18 AM

On march 24 i looked at the hive. It has 2 brood boxes and when i opened it, it was full. Both boxes were full of honey capped brood and the top box had lots of eggs. I was told to put the top box faceing the other direction about 5 ft away. The origenal hive box was the bottom and i was told to remove the queen cells every 5 to 7 days. Leave the new box alone for 10 days. When I opened the botton box march 31 there was only one cell so removed it. Then i realized there werre no eggs just a few capped brood left. I'm thinking the queen was in the other box when i did the split. So i called my teacher he said the same thing. He said i should open the new box to see what is going on. Well there was 2 open queen cells lots of capped brood with no eggs. Teacher said the new queen might have killed the old queen or the queen was killed in the process of the split and taking out the queen cells. Now he is trying to find a queen cell in his hives to give to mine or i will have to put the boxes back together. What is everyones thoughts on this? I wanted him to be there because it was the first split but he was busy.

Kirk-o · April 01, 2007, 11:55:06 AM

Go to Michael bush's page and read about splits and swarming this will help you have a working understanding of your own.This will help you be more competent it did me
kirk-o

kgbenson · April 01, 2007, 12:02:42 PM

A queen cell would be nice, a queen even better, but if he can give you a frame of eggs for both hives they should make themselves a queen. It is slower, but it should work.

Keith

papabear · April 01, 2007, 12:10:08 PM

My teacher has grafted some queens but they are not ready. If the new hive has new queens when will be able to tell with eggs?

kgbenson · April 01, 2007, 03:13:15 PM

Like many things in beekeeping, it depends. If the weather is good and she mates right away you might see eggs at the 10 day point post emergence. (mates around 5 days, lays around 10) If the weather is lousy she may be delayed by several days.

Keith

Understudy · April 01, 2007, 08:04:48 PM

If you have some brood frames you can transfer do it. The bees will if the frames have larvae possibly make a queen cell and it will help keep the numbers up.

Sincerely,
Brendhan

Michael Bush · April 01, 2007, 08:39:44 PM

Basically, I never destroy queen cells. I never deprive the hive that made them from at least one, and I usually put the rest in nucs to get queens. If they are superseding they probably know something I don't. If they are trying to swarm, and have made capped cells, they probably have already swarmed and I'll leave them queenless. If you suspect a hive is queenless the best solution is to give them some eggs and young brood and see if they start a queen. Then you can decide what to do next. The most common mistake here is to assume there is no queen because there are no eggs, when, in fact there is a virgin who is not laying yet and so you buy a queen that gets killed and you buy another that gets killed and they you find eggs.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslazy.htm#stopcuttingswarmcells