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Author Topic: Need a experience answer  (Read 2558 times)

Offline beekeeperookie

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Need a experience answer
« on: June 06, 2007, 05:48:50 pm »
I inspected my hive this morning, its on its 4th/5th week, I have just a brood box, the first two frames i pulled out didnt have anything on them in fact two on each side where basically empty.  So I found my queen and I notice what i believe to be a swarm cell its on the bottom of the frame.  My question is are they telling me they are getting crowded?  Do I need to remove this cell?  I only found one of these cells 



Offline doak

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Re: Need a experience answer
« Reply #1 on: June 06, 2007, 06:11:26 pm »
May be chancy, but remove the cell and add another deep,"IF" you are going to use deeps for brood. If not add a medium
doak

Offline abejaruco

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Re: Need a experience answer
« Reply #2 on: June 06, 2007, 06:34:24 pm »
Save the queen cell, obtein a new nucleus with the old queen. The queen cell in the strong hive because it needs enough bees, and your hive, broddless, will make honey. The old queen in the nucleus, perhaps can be required again.

Offline beekeeperookie

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Re: Need a experience answer
« Reply #3 on: June 06, 2007, 06:57:22 pm »
Ok that what I am going to do, is add another deep.  If I had the equipment i would save the cell and start a third hive but dont have the time or upkeep for three just yet

Offline doak

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Re: Need a experience answer
« Reply #4 on: June 06, 2007, 07:20:51 pm »
abejaruco has a point. The queen quits laying a few days before the swarm leaves. She has to slim down to flight condition. Therefore if there are no eggs or young larvae left to rear a queen with, you're left with a queenless, hopeless colony.
Take the x-tra deep and make the split. After everything cycles through you can dequeen one and use the newspaper method and recombine the two. If the one does swarm, at least you have the old gueen.
Either way they need more room, one deep is never large enough for a good strong colony with a good laying queen.
doak

Offline Brian D. Bray

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Re: Need a experience answer
« Reply #5 on: June 06, 2007, 07:38:14 pm »
I have found that bees will often consider the box built out with the outside frame on each side untouched, this is more true with 10 frame hives than 8 frames--another reason for using 8 frames.
To get the bees to build out the last 2 frames just move the 2nd frame on each side all the way to the outside and the outside frame in.  The outside drawn frames are usually honey stores so you shouldn't be breaking up the brood nest. 

The queen cell in the 1 photo can be argued as either a swarm cell or a supercedure cell from its position.  The fact that you have only the one cell indicates to me a supercedure mode verses a swarm mode.  If you've got more than 1 hive and a nuc box I would use that frame with the queen cell and several frames from another hive to make a nuc.  Just be sure the existing queen is not on the same frame as the queen cell when you make the move.
When you pull the frame with the queen cell the align the frames so that the brood frames are together, bracked by the empty frames and the storage frames on the outside.  You'll end up with a backup queen (or another hive) and also stimulate the one hive into drawing more comb.
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Offline beekeeperookie

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Re: Need a experience answer
« Reply #6 on: June 07, 2007, 10:00:51 am »
Ok so everyone is basically saying to make another hive with this queen cell, which i can do my new question is am i going still add on to the old hive? Another box?

Or can i take some full frames out of the old hive and put brand new ones in and that will hold them over until i can get some more boxes and frames?

Offline Scadsobees

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Re: Need a experience answer
« Reply #7 on: June 07, 2007, 01:48:51 pm »
Quote
Or can i take some full frames out of the old hive and put brand new ones in and that will hold them over until i can get some more boxes and frames?

Yes, you can.  Once they are partially drawn (hopefuly only a couple of days), then drop that new box on top, pulling a frame of honey if you have one from the bottom and putting that up top, replacing the honeycomb with an empty frame.

Assuming that this is a new package (4/5th week?) it is most likely a supercedure cell of sorts.  Sometimes the bees will just start raising a queen cell for no apparent reason, especially when the queen is new to the bees such as a package or a re-queening.  In fact one of my mature hives would for no apparent reason start a single queen cell, and did this several times through swarm season and that made me nervous but they didn't swarm.

Rick
Rick

Offline trapperbob

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Re: Need a experience answer
« Reply #8 on: June 07, 2007, 06:53:21 pm »
What if she demareed this hive, then it would make a stronger hive, and possibly more honey. If this is possible maybe somebody with a little more experience with a demaree method could explain this to her.