Budding Cottage

Hive 4

In May when the LAN group visited, we looked very closely at the hive.  It had been not building up in the way that I had expected.  In addition the bees seemed too quiet – so our friend the retired bee inspector had a closer look.

The hive was suffering from the result of varroa viruses – with larvae being born deformed (crooked wing) or dead in some places.  The pepperpot appearance of the capped brood, and a faint discolouration to it showed that the bees were aware of a problem and had been checking at the cell cappings to see why the larvae were taking so long to emerge.  There was some discussion about options; but the heavy treatment option appears to risk killing many bees.  I am currently holding fire on this and seeing how they do.

The LAN group found and marked the queen and we moved her into the brood box and shut down.

Today I opened up the hive and the bees appeared to be building up stores but no sign of BIAS .  There was some capped brood) and a selection of confused drones who had been trapped by the queen excluder being put onto the hive after they had been laid in the comb that sat above it.

Anyway, there were cells polished up and a high proportion of drones again, so I wondered if they had superceded again, or if the queen was just disturbed by our having relocated her to the brood box and taking her time to settle down again. Here’s to hoping.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 1st, 2014 at 8:33 pm and is filed under General, Hive D - Padgen from nucleus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.