Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: jimmy on July 15, 2008, 05:24:08 pm
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I have 4 hives, 1 exceptional strong ,2 not quite as strong and 1 weak hive .It was a new hive in the early spring but, so was the strongest hive. The weak hive has plenty of capped brood but very few new eggs.I am thinking of placing a frame of new fresh eggs from the strong hive into the weak hive to make a new queen.
1. Do I need to do anything special such as wait for autumn honey flow?
2. Place a queen plastic cell cap on new brood? which I have none and would have to order from somewhere.
3. Do nothing and wait for the hive to make a new queen on it's own from old queen, who must have been a weak queen from the start?
4. Buy a new queen from somewhere .My regular bee supplier is in N.Dakota . He migrates with his bees every year.
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it is best to use a very strong highly populated hive to start a queen. it may be best for you to pinch the queen and combine your weak hive with one of the mediocre hives.
your apiary is the classic 25-50-25. 25% of your hives are strong. 50% are ok. and 25% are weak.
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Hmmm. Not heard of the 25-50-25 before, but seems to work for me. Been that way all year, but seems to fluctuate between hives (hives go from super to good, some weak to strong etc).