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My hive is not doing well.
Here it is late spring (Nov = May in Northern hemisphere).
At the end of the winter there was an equivalent of 8 full full-size frames with capped honey from the last season.
Due to some unfortunate circumstances (and my mistakes) the hive was queenless for a month and the number of bees was declining.
At the end of Oct a new queen finally emerged and looks like she mated.
3 weeks later there are still only 2 frames with brood, capped and uncapped. I was hoping that as more bees emerge the brood will increase, but this is not happening.
There are hardly 2K bees inside and not many go foraging. The typical cloud of hovering bees at the hive entrance is missing.
The girls consume the honey, it is now down to equivalent of 5 full frames. Have a strong suspicion that some of it might be capped sugar sirup I fed them for a while.
A desperate web search found that feeding bees with banana will help with increasing the brood.
Katharina Davitt Bananas.pdf
Katharina Davitt Cavendish Bananas Increase Brood Rearing in Apis Mellifera.pdf
Has anyone tried this?
Any thoughts?
Here it is late spring (Nov = May in Northern hemisphere).
At the end of the winter there was an equivalent of 8 full full-size frames with capped honey from the last season.
Due to some unfortunate circumstances (and my mistakes) the hive was queenless for a month and the number of bees was declining.
At the end of Oct a new queen finally emerged and looks like she mated.
3 weeks later there are still only 2 frames with brood, capped and uncapped. I was hoping that as more bees emerge the brood will increase, but this is not happening.
There are hardly 2K bees inside and not many go foraging. The typical cloud of hovering bees at the hive entrance is missing.
The girls consume the honey, it is now down to equivalent of 5 full frames. Have a strong suspicion that some of it might be capped sugar sirup I fed them for a while.
A desperate web search found that feeding bees with banana will help with increasing the brood.
Katharina Davitt Bananas.pdf
Katharina Davitt Cavendish Bananas Increase Brood Rearing in Apis Mellifera.pdf
Has anyone tried this?
Any thoughts?