Hello all,
Is there anyway to trick or stimulate the queen to lay more eggs? She is currently laying, has plenty of space, but lots of empty cells.
It has been suggested that I need more bees going into fall and winter.
Thanks
Sometimes queens will interrupt their own brood cycle to limit mite count. Or there may be a forage dearth?? Also, there is not a magic number of bees you need to make it through the winter... more important is honey/feed supply. Kirk Webster - Vermont beekeeper- runs 4-frame nucs over winter, that's not a lot of bees.
It would help if you told use something about your colony, how many hive bodies, frames covered with bees, sealed and open brood, frames of honey, etc.
oops, sorry
8 frame
one deep with two completely empty frames, two frames with nectar/honey and eggs and larvae, three frames mostly full with capped brood
three medium supers, one capped and full, one mostly full and being capped, last lots of nectar,
three supers weigh 78 lbs
I did not weigh deep
thanks
I think the queen will lay in the empty cells as her capped brood emerges and gives more bees of nurse bee age. Without being able to look, it sounds like the colony has decided that storing nectar is more important than raising brood. You can force the queen to lay in a frame by placing an empty comb between frames of brood. The bees do not like brood to be seperated from the other brood, so the queen will start laying in the empty comb trying to join together the two sections of brood. This splitting of brood can be done if the weather is warm and there are enough adult bees to keep the brood warm. I would place the empty comb in the center of the brood cluster.
Thanks AR Beekeeper,
and everyone else who replied
Tone
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