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Author Topic: About my new queens.  (Read 1820 times)

Offline bayareaartist

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About my new queens.
« on: October 02, 2005, 02:19:02 am »
Hi all
I did a split and it worked great.
To begin with I had two hives, one a standard 9" deep. And the second was a 12” deep brood box with 12” deep frames. This was my first hive and the queen has been going great since March of this year.
My 9” box was not doing so good. I was supposed to purchase two strong nucs from someone and I got 6 frames of bees a little brood and no queen.
It was a little like buying a used car. I learned my lesson on that one. They tried to make a new queen but she was a drone layer so they killed her off and the hive was slowly dwindling with the ants moving in.
I took two 9” frames and loaded them in my 12” deep box for 2 weeks and then took both of them and put them in the 9” hive, one of the frames had the queen on it so the weak hive now had a queen.
The 12” deep hive was going great and they made right around 20 queen cells. When they capped most of them I did the split. I made a new batch of 12 deep frames and a new box and lid and bottom board and put the split right next to the original.
Exactly 11 days the queens emerged, I got to see one chew her way out and emerge. The one in the photo below is the one I was able to see emerge. It took around 4 more days for her to start to lay eggs, and now she is laying on as much frames as they have made for her. Since most of the field force stayed with the original hive I put more of the brood in the split off hive.
Both hives are laying and it is great to see.
The original hive is back to 80% of what it was before I split it and soon they will be back to a 100%.
And the 9” deep is really going strong, I put another 9” brood box on.
Here in San Francisco we have hit our Indian summer, last week the temperatures were in the high 80’s.
My hives and frames are built by me. I have to thank Michael Bush for his great site and advice he has written to me and the information I have read on this and other boards from him.

Below is the photo of the new queen.
Better photos next time.
Check the photo section I put other photos on there.

Donn

 

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