Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: dprater on November 06, 2013, 07:04:19 am
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Checking for stores and found emergence Q-cells no Q, a little caped and uncaped brood no eggs. I reduced the hive to one medium, good many bees, 5 frames covered or so.
I have a nuc with a laying Q from a swarm that showed up at my yard 3 weeks ago. This late in the year (not seen any dones lately) think I will combine the two. Should I cut the Q-cells out and wait a day or so then introduce the nuc as a newspaper combine? Also thinking I may even cage the Q for a day or so after the combine? Any other ideas?
Oh. I'm in south carolina
First time to have Q-cells this late
dan
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Checking for stores and found emergence Q-cells no Q, a little caped and uncaped brood no eggs. I reduced the hive to one medium, good many bees, 5 frames covered or so.
I have a nuc with a laying Q from a swarm that showed up at my yard 3 weeks ago. This late in the year (not seen any dones lately) think I will combine the two. Should I cut the Q-cells out and wait a day or so then introduce the nuc as a newspaper combine? Also thinking I may even cage the Q for a day or so after the combine? Any other ideas?
Oh. I'm in south carolina
First time to have Q-cells this late
dan
That's what I'd do. Make sure to get all QC. They already know they're queenless so I would bet they accept the swarm queen w/o problems. Sounds like they're both pretty small. Feeding helps during any queen introduction and will help them store up.
Your swarm could be an abscond. I would mark the queen, paper combine and feed. Where I live it's going into the upper 40's at night upper 60's by day. I'd think about mite treatments.
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I am really very new at all this, but is it my imagination or have there been more late and later swarms then is "normal"? Makes me wonder how much of Colony Collapse is actually bees packing their bags and absconding suddenly. These late season swarming/absconding is bee suicide in most parts of the country, even the deep south. Thus doesn't sound "normal" to me.
Besides those pesky SHB, what other things trigger absconding? Besides the home tree falling down. ;)
How long does it take for a queen to slim down enough to fly?
We use smoke to trigger the "get packed, forest fire!!!" response in our bees, but can the queen escape in a real life situation of fire? Or is she too heavy to launch? Because the rest of the colony can flee, but without her they can not survive for long. because there would not be any eggs at the new home to "make a queen".
I guess "in the wild", these colonies would simply perish. So I guess our bees are somewhat dependent on us beeks to be sure they have enough food.
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Sounds like a good idea.
To make sure you don't miss any (and the hive is for sure queenless) cut any cells you find, then check them in 3 days. At that time if not new cells are started, combine with the other hive using a newspaper and a queen excluder.
The queen excluder is more of a precaution, so that your queen does not wander among the new bees by accident and get killed. It is kind of late in the season to find a replacement queen. You can take it off in about a week. Do not leave it on the hive for winter.
Do not use the queen excluder at all if it is below 50F at night and your bees cluster. This is a good way to leave the queen outside of the cluster and lose her.
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More info and not good. Decided to do a V-mite check before I combine, glad I did, 24 hrs had 120 mite drop. Dang that happened fast Oct 9 less that 10 mites and today 120, did not know thay could build up that fast, guess I need to check more that once a month. I'm checking V-mite in my other hives now.
Would you guess the mites killed the Q or did they abscond?
I'm learning year number 2.
Think I could do a powder sugar a couple of times and get the V mite down and combine or just right this one off?
Thanks for the replys.
dan
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Hey Dan, was that a "natural" mite drop? as in nothing but the sticky paper used?
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Actually, that mite drop is not surprising.
You see 80% of mites is on brood. The mite drop that you observe is from the 20% that is not in capped brood. Since your hive is queenless, you don't get new uncapped brood. As a result any mites that emerge as the last brood emerges have to remain on the bees as there isn't any new open brood for them to infiltrate. So instead of the bees carrying around 20% of the mites in the colony, now they carry 100% of the mites resulting in increased natural drop numbers on your sticky board.
This is also why a period of broodlessness is an effective mite reduction tool. All the mites rush to the first few suitable brood cells, overwhelming and killing the larva and themselves.
Since the majority of the mites are going to be currently phoretic (on adult bees), a powdered sugar treatment or an oxalic acid vaporization is going to knock them off.
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Dan,
Why don't you treat with MAQS. Research the effectiveness of powered sugar shake.
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GSF- 120 was a natural drop rate.
Did a oxalic acid vaporization late yesterday and too many to count on the sticky board today. Took out the Q-cells today, Even if a Q could find a drone that would put new bees hatching mid Dec. not good odds.
Keeping a sticky board count every day, if it goods down in a day or to I'm coing to combine.
Two other hives had a count of 4 and 5 mites :). checking the rest next day or so.
Thanks
dan