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8 Posts
Basics: Pollen is good now and they are finding a **little** bit of nectar from something as I am seeing it in some comb. Swarming with commence in about 2 weeks and full flow just after that. No queen cells or supersedure cells present.
Did a complete inspection of my long hive yesterday and the first brood frame (deep) I pulled had nothing but capped drone on both sides! OK, went to the next frame and nothing but drone on one side and half of the other. There was a bit of capped brood. Alarm bells started ringing in my head---laying workers, AKA no queen? Next frame all capped brood, next frame looked more what I would expect, capped in center with larvae and food as you went out from the center. Same for next several frames with very young larvae so now I know I have a queen!
In my brief time of beekeeping I have never seen any single hive make so much drone brood. I am hesitant to remove and destroy the full frame of drone brood, even knowing it is probably full of mites, since the bees felt they needed that many drones. Just needing a bit of advice from more experienced beeks at this point. I would really like to remove the full frame of drones and feed them to the fish but should I? I always felt like the bees knew their business better than me but this seems a little over the top.
I really appreciate the knowledge on this forum and have been an avid reader for a couple of years, but needed to ask about this one.
Thanks!
Did a complete inspection of my long hive yesterday and the first brood frame (deep) I pulled had nothing but capped drone on both sides! OK, went to the next frame and nothing but drone on one side and half of the other. There was a bit of capped brood. Alarm bells started ringing in my head---laying workers, AKA no queen? Next frame all capped brood, next frame looked more what I would expect, capped in center with larvae and food as you went out from the center. Same for next several frames with very young larvae so now I know I have a queen!
In my brief time of beekeeping I have never seen any single hive make so much drone brood. I am hesitant to remove and destroy the full frame of drone brood, even knowing it is probably full of mites, since the bees felt they needed that many drones. Just needing a bit of advice from more experienced beeks at this point. I would really like to remove the full frame of drones and feed them to the fish but should I? I always felt like the bees knew their business better than me but this seems a little over the top.
I really appreciate the knowledge on this forum and have been an avid reader for a couple of years, but needed to ask about this one.
Thanks!