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2 Posts
Greetings! Long time lurker, finally have something to ask. Not sure what's going on with this nuc I made 21 days ago.
Here's the timeline:
5/25: Found a newly emerged queen wandering around so I made up a weak nuc(frame of comb, frame of nectar, small frame of emerging brood with a tiny bit of open brood I think) and threw her in.
6/7: Found single eggs and closed it up.
6/13: Found one frame that appeared to have single eggs, and one frame had several per cell. I know new queens can be a little enthusiastic sometimes but most cells had 2-4 and there were a couple cells with 6 or 7. Queen was spotted on the same frame... a little puny but I hoped she was just figuring things out.
6/15: I went today with the intention of giving them a frame of capped brood to boost their numbers. Took a peek and almost every cell has multiple eggs now. What little brood is being capped appears to be drones in worker cells. Most eggs are on the bottoms of the cells, but at least one was on the side. Started leaning toward laying worker after what I saw, so I gave them a small frame of eggs and young larva instead.
I'm assuming this is laying workers, but the presence of the queen is messing me up. Can you even tell if she's mated when they're throwing eggs all over? :scratch:
Don't want to waste a bunch of resources on a weak little LW nuc, but would hate to waste a queen that's potentially viable. Hoping the frame of open brood may reverse this since it hasn't gone on for long but setting my expectations low. Thoughts?
Here's the timeline:
5/25: Found a newly emerged queen wandering around so I made up a weak nuc(frame of comb, frame of nectar, small frame of emerging brood with a tiny bit of open brood I think) and threw her in.
6/7: Found single eggs and closed it up.
6/13: Found one frame that appeared to have single eggs, and one frame had several per cell. I know new queens can be a little enthusiastic sometimes but most cells had 2-4 and there were a couple cells with 6 or 7. Queen was spotted on the same frame... a little puny but I hoped she was just figuring things out.
6/15: I went today with the intention of giving them a frame of capped brood to boost their numbers. Took a peek and almost every cell has multiple eggs now. What little brood is being capped appears to be drones in worker cells. Most eggs are on the bottoms of the cells, but at least one was on the side. Started leaning toward laying worker after what I saw, so I gave them a small frame of eggs and young larva instead.
I'm assuming this is laying workers, but the presence of the queen is messing me up. Can you even tell if she's mated when they're throwing eggs all over? :scratch:
Don't want to waste a bunch of resources on a weak little LW nuc, but would hate to waste a queen that's potentially viable. Hoping the frame of open brood may reverse this since it hasn't gone on for long but setting my expectations low. Thoughts?



