These bugs are really not cooperating and are just confusing me. I would like your opinions on what may be going on with the WHITE HIVE. Brief facts:
My 2 hives suffered a bear attack on May 8-9. Red hive got the worst of it by far. White hive was toppled but only a few frames on the ground. It was 29F that night. I put both hives back together quickly and did not inspect other than to keep the brood nest together.
On May 16, I inspected both hives briefly as they were very testy and the weather here has been wet and cold. I did not locate the queen in either hive and saw no eggs,but I have difficulty seeing them unless I take my veil off and use a magnifying glass which I was not about to do with their testiness. Saw no queen cells. Both hives had capped brood and no larvae. White Hive was almost wall to wall capped brood (8 frame) in 2 deeps and had plenty of bees.
In anticipation of having to purchase queens or a Nuc, I did a thorough re-inspection of White Hive. No queen cells. I did see some larvae on edge between capped drones and capped worker brood. This made me wonder if I could have a laying worker starting thinking the queen was dead, or maybe the queen was alive, but wounded. I thoroughly scraped all the frames clean.
Queens were not available, so I purchased a Nuc on May 21 and installed it on RED Hive over a Snelgrove Board. My thinking here was I would get a "spare" hive up and running, feed eggs to WHITE HIVE to make a queen and suppress laying workers in both hives while things are being sorted out.
Today, May 27 I inspected WHITE HIVE to see the status and to install a frame or two of eggs from the hive above the Snelgrove. Much to my surprise, I found 3 capped queen cells in the upper deep. After scratching my head for quite a while I closed it back up.
I am pretty flummoxed. I know I would need to go through both deeps to get more info, but it seems to me that this hive swarmed or they are doing a supercedure. If it swarmed, I mistakenly took the lack of eggs and larvae as confirmation that the queen got killed, not thinking she was shutting down for a swarm. The other possibility, and one that make me just close up the hive is supercedure. Perhaps she was able to continue laying but was not up to par and they decided to supercede her? It seems that there is not much I can do now but I have learned that if you are scratching your head on what to do, let them decide for you.
Forgot to add that both hives were 3 deep at time of attack, reduced to 2 deep post attack. I added a super on May 21.
I would appreciate your thoughts on my thinking and what I may be missing here. Thanks, J
My 2 hives suffered a bear attack on May 8-9. Red hive got the worst of it by far. White hive was toppled but only a few frames on the ground. It was 29F that night. I put both hives back together quickly and did not inspect other than to keep the brood nest together.
On May 16, I inspected both hives briefly as they were very testy and the weather here has been wet and cold. I did not locate the queen in either hive and saw no eggs,but I have difficulty seeing them unless I take my veil off and use a magnifying glass which I was not about to do with their testiness. Saw no queen cells. Both hives had capped brood and no larvae. White Hive was almost wall to wall capped brood (8 frame) in 2 deeps and had plenty of bees.
In anticipation of having to purchase queens or a Nuc, I did a thorough re-inspection of White Hive. No queen cells. I did see some larvae on edge between capped drones and capped worker brood. This made me wonder if I could have a laying worker starting thinking the queen was dead, or maybe the queen was alive, but wounded. I thoroughly scraped all the frames clean.
Queens were not available, so I purchased a Nuc on May 21 and installed it on RED Hive over a Snelgrove Board. My thinking here was I would get a "spare" hive up and running, feed eggs to WHITE HIVE to make a queen and suppress laying workers in both hives while things are being sorted out.
Today, May 27 I inspected WHITE HIVE to see the status and to install a frame or two of eggs from the hive above the Snelgrove. Much to my surprise, I found 3 capped queen cells in the upper deep. After scratching my head for quite a while I closed it back up.
I am pretty flummoxed. I know I would need to go through both deeps to get more info, but it seems to me that this hive swarmed or they are doing a supercedure. If it swarmed, I mistakenly took the lack of eggs and larvae as confirmation that the queen got killed, not thinking she was shutting down for a swarm. The other possibility, and one that make me just close up the hive is supercedure. Perhaps she was able to continue laying but was not up to par and they decided to supercede her? It seems that there is not much I can do now but I have learned that if you are scratching your head on what to do, let them decide for you.
Forgot to add that both hives were 3 deep at time of attack, reduced to 2 deep post attack. I added a super on May 21.
I would appreciate your thoughts on my thinking and what I may be missing here. Thanks, J
It was not till I saw thousands of bullet nosed drone in worker cells that I concluded what happened.
