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Author Topic: first inspection ever for me and three new hives  (Read 1459 times)

Offline uglyfrozenfish

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first inspection ever for me and three new hives
« on: May 22, 2011, 08:47:55 pm »
So yesterday was finally a decent day and so I decided to do inspections on the three hives I housed two tuesdays ago and found three different scenarios.  All three hives came with five drawn frames of comb and a queen cage (I made a mistake and did not check to see if the queens had been released when I hived these colonies).  All the queens had been released when I did the inspection.  Also each hive had open queen cells.

First hive.  
Opened the first hive and found it fairly weak.  Not many bees.  1/4 of them were drones and could only find a few drone brood cells, no worker cells.  Didn't see any eggs but the comb is dark, I am new.   Did not see a queen but the cage was empty.  The bees were calm.  I felt due to lack of worker brood that there was no queen, or that she was laying drone eggs.  

Second hive.
Opened the hive they were calm at first.  About double the bees of the first hive.  Found capped worker and drone brood.  No eggs but the same scenario as above applied.  about halfway through the inspection the bees started getting "pissy" (JP).  After going throught the frames as I was closing up I found the queen on the inner cover.  Explains why the bees were a little upset.  


Third Hive.
This was by far the strongest hive.  Lots of bees and lots of capped worker and drone brood.  Didn't see the queen but it was hard to see through all the bees.  They were very calm and there were a couple of spots where the bees were really congregating.   Possibly the queen was in one of those clusters.  This hive actually had a frame with two capped queen cells in the middle of the frame along with four or five open queen cells.  I decided to pull this frame and put into the first hive to try and help strengthen them.  I did brush/smoke all the bees off of this frame before the transfer just to ensure that I did not move the queen.  

Questions.  

1.  was it a smart or dumb decision to move the frame from the strong hive to the weak one?

2.Why did I see so many queen cells?  

3.These frames were all from five frame nucs that had been recently queened.  Coud they have started raising their own queen before the caged queen was released?  

4. Could the queen cells I see be old cells since they are on pre-existing comb/frames from my nuc provider?

5.  Any suggestions from more experienced beeks?  I tried to put into use all the advice and expertise that has been given here since I joined.  

Thank you all for your comments.
Lee



















Offline Brian D. Bray

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Re: first inspection ever for me and three new hives
« Reply #1 on: May 23, 2011, 04:25:16 pm »
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Questions. 

1.  was it a smart or dumb decision to move the frame from the strong hive to the weak one?

Depends.  If the strong hive has already swarmed, as they often do once a queen cell is capped, then it was the wrong move.  If, as you guessed, the queen was in one of those clumps of bees, then the decission was a good one.

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2.Why did I see so many queen cells?

You saw 2 queen cells, the others might have only been queen cups.  The difference is if it has an egg or larvae in it it is a queen cell, if there is no egg or larvae in it it is a queen cup.  Bees make, tear down, and remake queen cups all the time.  Queen cells drawn from the brood area of the comb usually denotes a supercedure.  2 queen cells denotes a supercedure, even as many as 6 queen cells can denote a supercedure, a dozen or more queen cells, especially if located along the edges of the frames.

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3.These frames were all from five frame nucs that had been recently queened.  Coud they have started raising their own queen before the caged queen was released?


Yes, it is possible they started developing queen cells before the queen was released, but they wouldn't normally do that if there were a queen present in the hive at the time the nuc was made up unless the queen's phenomones indicated inaequate mating of a defect of some kind.  The queen's being located on the inner cover indicates she has not yet begun to lay.  She should in a few days unless the queen cells had eggs or larvae in them which would indicate a dissatisfaction with the current queen and the bees aren't letting her lay. 

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4. Could the queen cells I see be old cells since they are on pre-existing comb/frames from my nuc provider?

The cups might have been there prior to the creation of the nucs, queen cells are usually erased within 24-48 hours after the queens hatching or death within the cell.  It is also possible that the nucs were made up of frames that already had queen cells on them.  In such a case the bees will usually opt for the home grown queen over the introduced queen.  A hive with live queen cells, absent a queen, is still a queenright hive.

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5.  Any suggestions from more experienced beeks?  I tried to put into use all the advice and expertise that has been given here since I joined.   

Thank you all for your comments.
Lee

One thing I've noticed this year, something I've seen before is with it being so wet for a week or more at a time, the queen aren't being properly mated and supercedure or being queenless has become cyclic.  I have one hive, that after being split, is on it's third supercedure because of the weather limiting the queen's ability to properly mate.
I'm going to purchase a couple of queens, hoping they are better mated than what is occurring in my own yard.
Life is a school.  What have you learned?   :brian:      The greatest danger to our society is apathy, vote in every election!

 

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