[Thershey]

Hi all, got a couple today situations, hope you can help.

Nuc ?- can I grab a frame of honey, a frame of brood with two capped queen cells from hive A and a frame of brood from another hive (B) and make a Nuc? The queen cells are due to emerge tomorrow.

Swarm ? - got my first ever swarm call, haven't seen it yet but it sounds small, softball sizeish. It may be too small but I figured the experience is worth more than the bees. Do small swarms typically have a mated queen or could this be an after swarm? Also, can I pull a frame of brood from another hive to boost population or us it better to let it try to make it on its own? Any other tips I'm all ears?

 

[Michael Bush]

Bees from two hives are likely to fight. Bees from three hives are not likely to fight...

>haven't seen it yet but it sounds small, softball sizeish.

You know all that psycho math you do when someone tells you something (the rule of seven and the rule of four etc.) when it comes to swarms, take how big they say it is and divide by 4. Take how high up they say it is and multiply by 3.

 

[Santa Caras]

@MB...back to that nuc........
if its just capped brood from one hive and capped brood from a 2nd hive with only the nurse bees from one of the two........would that work???

 

[Michael Bush]

If you are trying to set up mating nucs and you don't want to take all the resources from one hive (which is simplest), then take a frame of brood from one, and frame of honey (with bees) from another and a shake of brood from another...

 

[Becky Jackson]

I think Michael means "a shake of BEES from another..."

Becky

 

[Thershey]

Thanks you all for the input. As it turns out the day turned into a complete bust, in fact my worst bee day yet. 1 out of a few hundred ain't bad.

Michael...change your swarm math, should be more like divide by 500 lol. There were maybe 30 bees left, no queen. Guessing they already absconded.

As to the Nuc scenario, I was hoping to avoid squishing queen cells but was out of space in my queen castle. As it turns out they killed the reintroduced queen and tore down the 14 day old capped queen cells I was going to harvest leaving themselves queenless. I can only guess marking her highness before reintroduction was a bad move, no clue why they tore down the queen cells?

What the heck, tomorrow will be better, time to go puff on a cigar and see if I can figure out what I learned from this so I don't make the same mistake again.

 

[Michael Bush]

>I think Michael means "a shake of BEES from another..."

Yes.

>Michael...change your swarm math, should be more like divide by 500 lol. There were maybe 30 bees left, no queen. Guessing they already absconded.

That's probably what was there when they told you it was a softball... I've never found MORE bees there than they described... in this day and age, it's best to get a picture. You often find that a "swarm" is a colony living in a tree, and that bee colony is really yellow jackets...

>As it turns out they killed the reintroduced queen and tore down the 14 day old capped queen cells I was going to harvest leaving themselves queenless.

Doubtful. If they tore down the cells they most likely have a queen.

>I can only guess marking her highness before reintroduction was a bad move, no clue why they tore down the queen cells?

Probably a virgin got out and killed them all. She's probably the one that killed your marked queen as well...

 

[Thershey]

>I can only guess marking her highness before reintroduction was a bad move, no clue why they tore down the queen cells?

Probably a virgin got out and killed them all. She's probably the one that killed your marked queen as well...


I originally made the hive queenless on Friday May 2, I can't make the bee math work to have a virgin yet, especially one that would have hatched yesterday. I pulled a frame with QCs back from the castle, they should emerge tomorrow unless they do the same thing.

 

[Beeonefarms]

I dont know your set up but Crazy thought here.. What if a virgin emerged elsewhere and took care of business in that nuc you set up..or there was a small cell you missed?
Keep us posted .. I am willing to learn something here.

 

[Thershey]

Given the chain of events I think Michael is right on the virgin or the queen is alive but they stripped her shiny new hot rod red thorax. The timing doesn't add up but I may have caught them midstream on a supersede and missed a cell or actually had a new virgin when I pulled the queen to start the cell building process. Coincidentally, there were a bunch of bees fanning on the landing pad this afternoon. Perhaps the mystery virgin was out on a mating flight.

At this point, they have what they need to end up with a new queen one way or another, probably best I leave them alone to sort it out.