Grow Your Own Magazine

Well, the girls moved in yesterday to their new home. x1 Queen, 25K ladies and a few hundred droney blokes. Lots of capped comb, lots of clean larvae, lots of really placid bees.

All settled in quite nicely and by 9am this morning (less than 24hrs since being chucked out of their nuc box) foragers were already making determined straight line flights to what must of been lurvely pollen and nectar. No doubt, ablely assisted by the syrup on tap. And gloriously sunny weather. And acres of green planty-type stuff surrounding them. And 5/11 frames of lurvely fresh foundation to work upon. Fingers crossed for our 2nd colony!

Looks like we've lost the first hive tho - can't have more than a couple of weeks before we say final bye bye to the final few hundred workers. Def looks like they're missing a queen, as we neither can find her nor have any eggs been laid for the last 3 weeks plus.

P17B

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Hi Ya Plot! well done you! they look fantastic. Go Girls
Sorry to hear about hive one, can you recap on what happened please. I wonder what would happen if you put some eggs from you new hive into this, kinda 'cut and paste' some, would they turn one into a new queen for you? trouble is, in these days its all about disease! bad, bad, bad for the beekeepers, and of course the bees!
Mine were busy at the weekend, I need to go in and have a looksie, to try and put my mind at rest that they did not 'ball' Atilla the 2nd! she has one heck of a red blob on her back! fingers are very much crossed.
Girls are bringing in pollen, something I like to see! can mean that they are feeding young.
whizzing around their hive with noisy petrol mower yesterday - they were soooo good, not a peep - awww bless. Just a few came to inspect the mower thats all.
Please keep me posted Plot17b

Hi, It is a real shame about the swarmed colony. It must be close to 6 weeks since it was hived now, and about 3 weeks ago after someone inspected, we were told that there was no queen was to be found and there was possibly a lot of drone cell on the frames. We inspected on 8th June and realised there was not much drone...but no eggs, larvae and 3 pairs of eyes could not find the queen. I've attached some piccies so you can see the poor quality brood frames.

Whether the queen was never captured with the swarm, whether she died, if she is old and not laying (and "hidden"), we are still not sure. Ken is thinking of re-queening but to be honest, there are few workers left and no brood coming through. Whether a new queen could become established and lay fast enough, and enough workers remain to nurture them is debateable.

We had discussed using one of my frames - the apiary chap dismissed it as a rescue option on the basis it puts my £pricey nucleus at risk and the colony just sounds lost. But it is still an option for us to use a frame to kickstart the colony.

Perhaps the best option is to accept loss of the first one, build my colony up, and THEN create a new nucleus. I favour this myself. Will be a good learning curve to go through too.

I've just been offered through Freecycle a stack of hive equipment and collect it all tonight, so we will have enough hardware to start building a second healthy colony. (Will flame the second hand equipment to ensure no disease contamination happens). I'll let you know how we progress.

But at least my nucleus is thriving so we have one good population to observe and learn from.
Byeee, P17B

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hmmmm, thats really sad, I did not think it was as bad as the pics show. So few bees.
I think you have the best plan. good luck