So I cut the comb out of the feeder, and it was pretty well built up in there. When I checked the box, they had drawn 14 sides of foundation into comb, and had lots of eggs and brood in there. I thought that was pretty good, since I hived them less than 2 1/2 weeks ago. The other new hive was also starting to draw comb in their feeder, I discovered when I looked closer, so that had to go, too. It had a dozen sides of comb in the brood box. Since they were filling up below and moving upwards, I put another box of foundation on top of each one. These hives are growing great!
The walkaway split taught me the importance of bee space. Since last weekend, they'd redrawn all the badly placed bridge comb they'd drawn in the second brood box that I cut out. I've decided that the boxes I built aren't exactly like the one's I bought -- the rabbeted edge isn't cut as deep, and the frames sit a little higher along the top. As a result, there is a bigger gap between upper and lower frames if I put one of my built boxes on top of one of my bought boxes. So I switched frames into the correct boxes and hope that solves the problem.
But my cutdown is in trouble. I couldn't find the queen I saw last week. Worse yet, there were no eggs or brood in there. The population is dwindling, but still stronger than the others. I put another frame of eggs and capped brood in there so they could try it again, then thought that I can't have them just making queen cells all summer. So I'll try to order a queen for delivery in the next few days. I wanna try get this hive back on track before too much time runs.
What reason would a hive have for rejecting a queen? I don't know if that's what happened, or whether she was no good, or just failed to mate or whatever. This has become my problem hive.
-- Kris
Topic: Burr Comb, bee space, and where is my queen? (Read 3073 times)