Budding Cottage

So, Hives B and C….the two swarms that are so different.

Hive B has for some time worried me because it had the varroa problem and was so slow to develop.  The queen was lovely and placid and the bees nice, if fidgety, but they did not thrive.  So a course of thymol should have put their world to rights – however, it is mid July and they are still only working with brood over 3-4 combs and with few stores.  If the seasons really are early then we don’t have a huge amount of time for them to increase their brood size and get in stores before the end of August.  This is of additional concern since there appears to be an emergency queen cell mid frame – has something happened to the queen?  If it has, then what hope have the colony of settling down ready for the winter?

Hive C used to have good brood pattern, but suddenly it is full of drone brood – not good news.  My suspicion is that the queen has run out of sperm, though when the bee inspector visited in early June, we did note a queen cell which subsequently seemed to be abandoned.  Again there is a queen cell.

So I hit the books.  For Hive C all the advice had been to requeen or to shook swarm.  Particularly in the light that if there is a drone laying worker, she is likely to kill any added queen – as is the queen if she is still there but laying drones.  However, I CANNOT FIND THE QUEEN.

Hive B – the advice I was given was to stop nursing a hive that won’t thrive and give up on it.  I can’t bring myself to go with that, but if the queen is gone and they don’t build up for the winter, then they are in trouble anyway.

So, I decided to try and unite the hives.  They happened to be almost next to each other, about 1.5 metres apart.  I took Hive B as my preferred hive and moved it slightly towards Hive C and then put sheets of newspaper on the top of the brood box, weighed them down with a queen excluder and then put a brood box on top, pricking some holes through the paper.  Then I worked through the brood box of Hive C, LOOKING FOR THE QUEEN WITH NO JOY and put each frame, individually, into the brood box.  Then Iadded the upper brood box that was almost empty of bees, and closed up.

The bees were not over impressed, but they didn’t bother me, they just fussed around the hive.

NEXT STEPS

Wait and see if they make it through the paper and unite without too many casulties.

Wait and see if Hive B did still have a queen and if it did, whether she is still alive after the merge.

Wait and see if the queen cell in Hive B was viable and if so, whether a virgin queen is likely to hatch and take over (2-3 more weeks of waiting).

Wait and see if Hive C takes over and kills the queen or destroys the queen cell, and if so, whether the drone laying continues on.

Other worries – the multiple drones may struggle to make it through the queen excluder and so be trapped in the top of the hive, but will have to wait for a week whilst I leave them be, before I can go in and remove it.  A drone laying worker may kill the queen.

So many worries. Worst case scenario – the uniting fails, or the drone laying worker/queen wins out, and then the whole hive would have to be shook swarmed to make their own destinies.  So I would lose a colony, but since Hive C was pretty much lost without a queen, and Hive B was unlikely to make it through the winter I guess that is a mini failure rather than a huge catastrophe.

What about possible benefits?  Well, if it all went really well, then short term the bees would have additional foragers to help build up stores.  The nice Hive B queen (or her offspring) could settle down, (mate if it is the offspring) and then develop the colony in time for it to enter winter in a stronger position with plenty of workers to draw wax for her brood chamber.

What would I change? The only real things I would consider doing differently would be to continue nurturing Hive B and hoping for the best – taking it through winter as a nucleus maybe – though I am not sure on the survival rates of such a small colony.  But some of the hardened beekeepers did say that there is only so much nursing you can do.  After that you have to be harder hearted.

NEXT STEPS

Wait a week and see if the bees have eaten through the paper and merged and not killed each other (am worried about trapped drones).

Remove queen excluder unless the brood layer has been active still in the upper brood box and is a queen – in which case what to do? If she is still active up there then I need to work through and see if I can find her.

Check if the queen cell has hatched and merge brood comb from the upper box with the lower (hopefully not upsetting a possible virgin queen). I may have to leave this step until 2-3 weeks from now, just in case.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 15th, 2011 at 10:28 pm and is filed under Hive B (Swarm bees from Malvern), Hive C (swarm bees from Ashperton). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.