Well the issue is, is it the queens, or is it some sickness.

For example, if the hive has a severe case of mites and is collapsing, the queen will sometimes keep laying quite well even though the bees are in no shape to look after the brood. She will then sometimes lay 2 eggs in one cell.

You need to figure out if it's sickness, or the queens. For sickness the two main culprits would be nosema, or mites. If you can test for those & rule them out, then look at the queens. But if you only have drone brood & you are sure of that, it's the queen.

 

If the weak hives are not sick and just have poor queens, then perhaps you can pull the the frame(s) with eggs from the weak hives and replace them with frames with eggs from a strong hive and let them raise queens(just make sure you remove the weak queen)or order new queens. Jim

 

Are there any honey / pollen stores? You could try brood builder patties and sugar water feed. I'd give it two weeks, open it back up and see what you have.

 

Ok i will throw my two cents in for what its worth. Probably about that. First,do you have a problem with mites. If not,quit treating. Apilife Var will stop the queens from laying. If they made it through the winter,have decent stores,which they sound like they do,you probably dont hive high mite counts unless you know for sure you do. Treating in late summer,early fall is fine but in my opinion get rid of the apilife var and watch them take off. Hope this helps. Peace Dave

 

squeeze them down to 1 box or to a nuc may not be enough beed to cover the brood area

 

Oops! it double posted!

 

I don't equalize my colonies in the early spring until the strong ones have drawn out a bunch of comb, and most of it has brood. The weak ones get fed (even the ones in nucleus hives have hive-top feeders) syrup and patties, but they have to slug it out on their own until Peter has plenty of brood to rob and pay Paul with.

If I lose a weak colony in the meantime, I just figure my entire stock got stronger through attrition. I feel it is as important to get rid of the weak bees as it is to obtain the good bees, but then, my goal is >2,500 colonies. I'm building equipment to quickly move up from hobbyist to sideliner to breeder / commercial operator. Somebody with 2 hives won't necessarily feel that way.

The larger colonies make a #@!! of a lot more wax than the weak ones, and they don't dally about it either. I added a second deep to a colony last week and it already has 10 more drawn frames. They will likely get their 3rd deep in an other two to four weeks. I remove brood when they appear to be a few weeks from swarming and replace it with foundation if it is in the deeps, and I will be trying foundationless for the comb supers this year.

That imported brood really does boost the smaller colonies. They usually get cracking and draw out some comb after a two brood comb bump. I'm lucky to have enough nectar flows to wait.

I get a lot more drawn comb than I would if I equalized my hives earlier in the year, and I can split farther - 3 or 4 instead of two. It also helps to build up 4 deeps so I have strong starter and finisher colonies for queen rearing.

I equalize at the first sign of large-scale robbing or a dearth of nectar, or just before it.

You could combine the weak colonies if you suspect bad queens, let the best one win, then split them later after you raise or buy good queens. I just try to keep all my swarm queens for at least a year to evaluate them, so I take this calculated risk. An early, extended nectar dearth would probably hurt me, but so far the aggressive approach is paying off. This is based on the wet year / drought cycle in my area. Next year or the one after, I may play it more conservative.

 

This is what I did on Saturday:
Removed the Apilife VAR
Selected the queen that seemed the best of the three. One was from 2009 so she was done anyway.
Forced whatever bees that were in the top deeps in each hive into the bottom deep.
Combined the 3 colonies with newspaper between each deep.
Took 2 frames of sealed and open brood/bees from a cranking hive plus shook another frame into the top box.
I will check on them Tuesday and see what, if anything, has gotten better and if they are integrated between all three deeps I will make it a 2 deep hive and monitor the queens strength. If she has not gotten kick started and laying hard I think I may get rid of her and steal a few more frames of brood from a couple of other strong hives and let them raise there own hopefully. I've read here that a queenless hive will still produce a honey harvest so i'll make sure there are enough bees to do this. It is so close to the flow that I'd rather opt for more honey and try to requeen a little later. I plan on grafting around the middle to end of April. I only have about 20 mating nucs built but that should be enough to at least get me my own queens and make the splits I am hoping to make to get my hive number up to 25 or 30. A lot of this has to do with the flow. I don't want to have to feed 300 lbs of sugar like I did last year so if I can get some well mated queens by late May there will still be the last 4-5 weeks of the flow to help supply the splits and I have some frames of honey/pollen currently from the combined hives in a freezer.
Thanks-wish me luck. I really would like to send a nice check to the chordomafoundation.org
Howard
Hampstead,NC

 

Howard - Probably a good option. Best of luck to you and your bees. Do tell us how it goes in a few months.

 

Howard, let us know how it goes. Thanks. tp