typical swarm control split

laketrout said:

I split a strong hive about 5 or 6 weeks ago , took the one year old queen and put her in a medium super with stores etc.

Click to expand...

Hmmm, what is the etc.? 5, 6 weeks ago and this queen is still in a medium super. Maybe you caused her demise. I would never do such a thing.

Well, a queen cannot do much without workers to prepare brood cells and feed the eggs/larva that get laid. Besides the queen you added, were there other bees - hopefully including nurse bees?

A split should normally include some brood and nurse bees to care for the brood.

Here again. Is your whole life surrounded around my post?

Its like having a young untrained puppy, Ace. Someone has to follow it around to clear up the messes. :lookout:



When you post comments like this ....

Acebird said:

Maybe you caused her demise. I would never do such a thing.

Click to expand...

I feel the urge to offer an alternative .... opcorn:

I would suspect the queen didn't have a good support crew; lost a good portion of bees to drift. What did it look like 1 week later, as far as stores and bees, did you give her any capped brood.

As you may have surmised from the preceding posts, you did not say how much of the work force you transferred with the queen and frames. I typically transfer the queen and 3 frames with good brood and Pollen and one of stores with all clinging bees on them. and one with drawn comb, and one undrawn. I also shake in a frame of bees for good measure to account for drifters.
All the space in the world will not make a queen ramp up her laying if she does not have ample nurse bees to cover them. All this is of course under the assumption that the worker force is low in the split as you did not mention that aspect of the hive.

That was the etc. guys alot of stores went with her , the split was on 5/14 ,brood ,honey , pollen ,a good split . Down the road the brood came out and numbers went up so I added a second med. then things just stayed the same but now numbers are dwindling and no new brood to be found but the queen is still inside .To me the problem is the queen not laying , but was hoping I could learn whats going on and how to fix it from beeks with more experience . Forgot to add drifting was a problem and I think I lost alot of my foragers to the parent hive but with the new brood and feeding I thought they would get things rolling and give the queen time to get back to laying .

I would off the queen, and combine them with another hive to get things back on track.

Then, if you think that hive is strong enough for a split, buy a queen or raise a queen and do the split.

If you try to limp a hive around on life support, there is a strong possibility you lose the entire hive one day to robbers, ants, wasps, drift, etc. Then the wax moths and other critters move into the empty comb and you have a huge mess on your hands.

I did a weak split earlier in the year, the next day robbers came in and killed thousands of bees. Hours later, thousands of ants invaded the hive. Outlook was not good for the split, so I combined them back with the original colony.

IMO, this is about resource management. For each worker, you get a certain amount of productivity. To maximize that productivity, they need to be in a strong hive so they have purpose. Having them hang out and do maid service with a queen that isn't laying is pointless and you should put an end to that situation.

Before you "off" your queen...5 weeks ago weren't you smack in the middle of your flow? Are you sure that medium super didn't get honey bound?
Doesn't take but a few days to fill one on a heavy flow (I'm assuming you had one of course). As soon as brood hatches they will start backfilling as soon as the cell is cleaned and before the queen can lay.

dj , this could be a possibility I didn't have alot of extra drawn comb to give them except for the frames from the parent hive and they were bringing in stores up to last week and we have had a good flow . If this is what happened am I to late to fix it , I'll check the numbers again and see how there doing and see if there are any fresh eggs .

laketrout said:

Forgot to add drifting was a problem and I think I lost alot of my foragers to the parent hive ...

Click to expand...

The drifting should have been the other way towards the original queen not away. Are they using the second box you put on? Is the brood area open or full? Was there any eggs in the original split?

laketrout said:

dj , this could be a possibility I didn't have alot of extra drawn comb to give them except for the frames from the parent hive and they were bringing in stores up to last week and we have had a good flow . If this is what happened am I to late to fix it , I'll check the numbers again and see how there doing and see if there are any fresh eggs .

Click to expand...

Put a new super under. Put all frames with honey and capped brood in the top super, all open brood in the bottom. Just add foundation in empty spaces if you have no drawn comb and feed. Honey bound will slow a queen big time. If that is the problem, you should be able to right it.

Even if you do get the queen to lay, the bees are 5-6 weeks old, to be safe you need to transplant some frames of brood from another hive.

tanksbees said:

Even if you do get the queen to lay, the bees are 5-6 weeks old, to be safe you need to transplant some frames of brood from another hive.

Click to expand...

+1

dj you need to adjust your signature line. It takes one person to raise a family and only one person to really screw it up.

If there are really no eggs at all i would say there is a queen problem - or they actually requeened when you weren't looking and the new one hasn't started laying yet. If there is so much backfilling going on to curtail the queen then they will also be building comb - which she will lay at least some eggs in. Unless the nuc really had no room at all to build comb. Even then i have never seen a hive with a laying queen so plugged out that she could not lay at all - they usually swarm before that.

Acebird said:

dj you need to adjust your signature line. It takes one person to raise a family and only one person to really screw it up.

Click to expand...

Yes Acebird, right away Acebird...whatever you say Acebird!

OK if I put a frame of brood in this hive from another hive do I shake all the bee's off or will they except the bee's on the frame as being nurse bee's .

The only risk of not shaking is if the frame has the queen. An extra step would be to shake them off, put on a QE, then an empty box, set the brood in the box and the nurse bees should return quickly. Then put them in the other hive.

Mark, do they call that reverse pouring?