[CaughtbytheGirls]

I caught a swarm last memorial day and they did great last summer in a two deep full. Bottom brood, top they completely filled w/ honey. Last fall I took one full med. super and left one + the full and estimated about 100lbs for the girls to make it through the sometimes brutal central NY winter.
I opened the hive two days ago to clean and inspect and found:
top super was full
top full was also untouched
bottom has no brood but most of the honey and pollen was gone, no eggs or brood to be found. some open cells w/ what looks like fresh honey.
The queen was on a frame in the top full looking happy. There were no queen cells being built yet.
My questions are, did i leave too much for them or will they still need it when and if she starts laying? Since they were a caught swarm i Have no idea how old she is, should i requeen?

They has been alot of pollen coming in for about a week now so what do the experts have to say?

 

[Carl F]

I am no expert but everything sounds great and I would not change a thing. Some races (crosses) of bees do overwinter on fewer stores than others. I have heard that sometimes a mild winter can cause a colony to consume more stores because they can break from their cluster, fly some, and consume more energy. The size of the winter cluster has a lot to do with the amount of stores consumed also.

If that swarm got you surplus honey when you only had them since Memorial day, they overwintered on few stores, and IF they seem to cope with mites well then I would think about starting a few nucs and raising some more queens. That sounds like very good stock!

 

[victory1504]

Sounds like you ( and they ) did GREAT ! Reverse your deep supers. Their natural inclination is to move upward. Sounds like your spring buildup has not gotten underway.

Leave the shallow super on top. I might use a queen excluder to keep the queen out of it. It will keep. They very well may not need it. You can take it when you take off this year's honey. Keep reversing the hive bodies ( deep supers ) as brood rearing moves to the upper chamber.

I presume you will extract it. If you are going to cut it out you might want to take it now before they track it up and darken the cappings. When you need to add a super for new honey, put it under the queen excluder. The queen will be reluctant to lay in newly drawn comb.

I would plan on requeening on the honeyflow. I'm not sure when your flows come. You don't know if she is an old queen or a young queen from an after-swarm. If it was a really big swarm she is probably an old ( primary-swarm ) queen.

I find that locally raised queens that mate with our local ferrule drones are pretty mean. Mean, aggressive bees take all the fun out of beekeeping.

 

[valleyman]

Sorry boys, but here goes. You have got some very bad advice so far. First, how big is your cluster? You very much need to requeen if you don't have any brood or eggs. If you have a good amount of bees you need to do a split and use new queens in both. You can put 1/2 of the honey in each of your brood boxes or maybe even collect some of it for your use, and for sure collect the super that was untouched. It is probably a little early to do a split in your area, but you are going backward with a useless queen. So if I were you I would do the split and hope for some warm weather. Very best of luck!!!

 

[Mike Gillmore]

After reversing your brood boxes it would be good to open up the overhead capped honey in your medium too. Put your other medium back on now and divide the capped frames up between the two boxes, every other frame (capped - empty) in both boxes. This will keep them moving up into empty space. A solid overhead box of capped honey might trigger backfilling of the brood nest and swarming.

 

[Mike Gillmore]

Valleyman brings up a good point. You should be seeing at the very least a couple frames of eggs at this point. You may want to take a close look again for any sign of brood or eggs, and if none are found plan on requeening as he suggested.

 

[victory1504]

Sorry boys, but here goes. You have got some very bad advice so far. First, how big is your cluster? You very much need to requeen if you don't have any brood or eggs.

If the lack of eggs and brood is because of the later season, she will take off laying as the weather warms. Clearly your season is later than mine in Tennessee. Your queen should be laying if weather permits. There should be at least some eggs and brood anyway.

I agree with valleyman, that if there is no brood and eggs AT ALL you probably have a major problem with your queen. Queens may be hard to come by at this time of year. If you can get a frame with eggs in it, from another hive, they will probably supercede that queen.

A supercedure cell is typically right in the middle of the brood pattern ( eggs ) rather than in the corners or edges like a swarm cell. Supercedure queens are good queens.

 

[brac]

I have brrod and eggs in Maine, you should have more than I do. Time to requeen. But I would think you need to buy a queen, can't be any drones flying in NY.
Good Luck

 

[My-smokepole]

On this same subject two hives First one full of bees, brood and supplys. The other one very few Bees, or supplys, no cap brood and I have a hard time seeing eggs. Though I did see the queen. The one thought that I am have is to take a box first box and move it over to the sec with newspaper in between. or just move a couple of frames?