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3 Posts
Hi all!
We are pretty new so I appreciate the help!
One of our hive appears to have swarmed. No eggs at all, a handful of capped brood and a few new bees, but no one younger than that. We saw several open queen cells yesterday and workers appeared to be dragging out some larva that we assumed to be would-be-queens.
We have 2 medium 8 frame boxes and had intended to add a third before we realized what was happening. They have almost all of their current frames drawn. The entire second box and about half of the first is capped honey, nectar and pollen, leaving roughly 4 frames worth of cells empty for new queenie. Based on lots of reading, I'm expecting in 3-4 weeks to have a laying queen again. (We think she may have emerged quite recently)
I'm finally at my question:
Do I give them another box to start drawing out comb, or will they not be able to defend all that with their numbers down? Also, if I do add one, Do I put it between the first and second so that the 100% honey box is at the top and not between what we would hope to be frames of brood? I hope this makes sense to someone. Please help, thank you!
We are pretty new so I appreciate the help!
One of our hive appears to have swarmed. No eggs at all, a handful of capped brood and a few new bees, but no one younger than that. We saw several open queen cells yesterday and workers appeared to be dragging out some larva that we assumed to be would-be-queens.
We have 2 medium 8 frame boxes and had intended to add a third before we realized what was happening. They have almost all of their current frames drawn. The entire second box and about half of the first is capped honey, nectar and pollen, leaving roughly 4 frames worth of cells empty for new queenie. Based on lots of reading, I'm expecting in 3-4 weeks to have a laying queen again. (We think she may have emerged quite recently)
I'm finally at my question:
Do I give them another box to start drawing out comb, or will they not be able to defend all that with their numbers down? Also, if I do add one, Do I put it between the first and second so that the 100% honey box is at the top and not between what we would hope to be frames of brood? I hope this makes sense to someone. Please help, thank you!