Hello, I'm a second season keep looking for advice on what to do about a hive that appears to be superseding what seems to be a good queen.
The background: I have two overwintered deeps that started from late spring nucs in 2013, they limped through the summer/fall, but came through the winter fine and began to build up quickly this year. I added medium supers which began to fill out. A month ago, at about the time I was considering doing some splits to reduce the chance of swarming, I broke my leg. Knowing my ability to monitor the hives would be limited I asked a friend to make splits to to reduce the chance of swarming. He was unable to find the queens to make the splits, but he moved 5 frames to each nuc and then checkboarded the original hives. That was March 22.
One of the nucs ended up with a queen and the original is going through the natural process of re-queening.
My question concerns the other hive where the queen remained in the original hive. The queen has a nice laying pattern and the original hive frames are well filled with eggs/larve/capped brood. Additionally, the medium super is nearly filled with textbook brood and honey pattern. However, there are numerous queen cells located high on the frames. I have read where checkerboarding may cause supersedure...I assume that is what is happening. If so what to do,
1. Do I let nature take its course and let the bees sort it out?
2. Do I attempt to move the queen into the queenless nuc?
3. Do I move frames with queen cells into the nuc? (already attempt this on March 30 with some cells from the hive in question...awaiting the result)
4. Do I take the queen along with the brood in the medium super and make another split and let the queen cells have the hive body?
5. Do something else?
My goal this year is some strong hives and not honey crop. Thanks for your inputs
The background: I have two overwintered deeps that started from late spring nucs in 2013, they limped through the summer/fall, but came through the winter fine and began to build up quickly this year. I added medium supers which began to fill out. A month ago, at about the time I was considering doing some splits to reduce the chance of swarming, I broke my leg. Knowing my ability to monitor the hives would be limited I asked a friend to make splits to to reduce the chance of swarming. He was unable to find the queens to make the splits, but he moved 5 frames to each nuc and then checkboarded the original hives. That was March 22.
One of the nucs ended up with a queen and the original is going through the natural process of re-queening.
My question concerns the other hive where the queen remained in the original hive. The queen has a nice laying pattern and the original hive frames are well filled with eggs/larve/capped brood. Additionally, the medium super is nearly filled with textbook brood and honey pattern. However, there are numerous queen cells located high on the frames. I have read where checkerboarding may cause supersedure...I assume that is what is happening. If so what to do,
1. Do I let nature take its course and let the bees sort it out?
2. Do I attempt to move the queen into the queenless nuc?
3. Do I move frames with queen cells into the nuc? (already attempt this on March 30 with some cells from the hive in question...awaiting the result)
4. Do I take the queen along with the brood in the medium super and make another split and let the queen cells have the hive body?
5. Do something else?
My goal this year is some strong hives and not honey crop. Thanks for your inputs