The Experiment, Queenless hive

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BadBeeKeeper
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The Experiment, Queenless hive

Unread post by BadBeeKeeper »

I have two hives that I have been maintaining since 2011, my first hives and I am, perhaps, more sentimental about them than I should be. Despite my bungling they have managed to survive and I want the line to continue. The original two Carniolan queens are long gone but through swapping brood and raising queens I think the genetics have merged somewhat...although I'm not real sure because my bad beekeeping extends to lousy recordkeeping...in the beginning, with only two hives it was easy to keep everything in my head. Now, not so much.

Anyhow...the hive I call #1 was discovered to be queenless this spring, still a large population, just no queen and no brood. It is almost certainly -my- fault, I have completely lost track of how old the queen was, I know that hive had swarmed and it had a new queen then, but I cannot remember just exactly what year that was. It was too early for queens to be available here (from my usual supplier) and probably still too early to raise one and get it successfully mated. But, I didn't want to just let them die off without trying to do -something-.

So, I took a frame of brood from #2 and put it into #1, and stacked the boxes of #1 on top of #2, separated by an inner cover with the round feeding hole still open. The intention was to kinda sorta mimic the use of a Cloake board, which I do not happen to own. I was hoping to see some queen cells generated on the frame of brood that was now at the top of the stack, hopefully far enough away from the queen in the bottom boxes...but apparently not. Several days later I checked for cells and found none. Having other things to do with other bees, I did not bother with them further, there seemed to be no point in doing anything further with them at that time, I would get to them later.

I know, it was all wrong. My knowledge of the use of a Cloake board could be written on a postage stamp, with enough room left over for the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence. I've seen it mentioned in books a few times and skimmed over it, whatever bits and pieces are in my head just got stuck there by accident and probably not in any sort of logical format. I resigned myself to the idea that I would lose the hive and the originality of its genetic make-up, there should be enough bees to split when queens became available.

One other hive had gone queenless (again, likely my fault for not knowing how old she was, disappointing because these were my Italians and I wanted to maintain a little of their genetics in the yard for a couple of reasons, and I had planned on raising several queens from them this year). When queens came in last week I got two new Carnis, unfortunately there were no Italians yet. One new one went into the [former] Italian hive and the other was destined to re-queen #1.

I went over to the four-box stack of #1 and #2 and climbed up to see just how many bees might be in the top two boxes...and got a big surprise- the top two boxes were jam-packed with new brood, at least 10 frames, maybe more, plus a whole boatload of drone brood all over and in the space between the bottom of the bottom frames and the extra space provided by the inner cover separating the boxes. I did not expect this at all, I had not thought that the queen in the bottom boxes would pass the barrier of the inner cover that separated them from the top boxes (despite the hole). Apparently I was wrong in a big way.

Change of plans. I went through the boxes carefully and did not find a queen, so I put the boxes back to their original location and reassembled them. Then I went through the boxes of #2 and found the queen in the bottom box. I probably should have notched some cells in #1 but because I had a new idea and needed to do something different, and I was losing daylight, I didn't. We'll see how that goes if the temperature comes up enough to inspect them in the next day or so (unseasonably cold here, currently), with a little luck I'm hoping to see some queen cells...if not, I've lost nothing.

The queen that was intended to go in #1 is parked in a nuc box, with brood and extra nurse bees shook in, donated from one of the Russian hives that had been going gangbusters after having the wraps left on for an extra month. If #1 has not generated any queen cells, the nuc will get merged with them.

The [former] Italian hive also got some donated brood and nurse bees to go along with the new queen, just as a bit of insurance...though it appeared that the bees were going to accept their new queen with no issues- within minutes she had attracted attention and they were investigating without any apparent hostility...it was interesting to see her extending her 'tongue' through the screen of the cage in what appeared to be an "I'm hungry, please feed me" appeal. (I don't know if that's what it really was, but that's what it looked like.)

Even though it looked like the new queens would probably be accepted by their new 'families' and I could have done direct releases, I didn't swap the corks for candy until the following day. Now I'm jonesing for the temperature to come up a little more so that I can see if everything has gone as intended.
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BadBeeKeeper
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Re: The Experiment, Queenless hive

Unread post by BadBeeKeeper »

Checked #1 yesterday- Queen cells present but at bottom of frames in top box, and stuck to top of frames in bottom box and/or neighboring frames. Destroyed at least one getting the frame out, one good one left on that frame. Decided to put it all back together and not risk any more damage.

Checked on the new Queens in #4 and Nuc- both MIA. Candy eaten, queens not in cages, just gone. One Queen Cell in each, probably from the donated Russian brood. This is not what I wanted, I already have more of the Russian line than I intended...though since they are already one generation away from the original hybrid queens they probably have more Carni in them now but no way to know.

Can't make up my mind whether to go back into #1 and see if I can find some extra Carni cells (at the risk of damaging more), or go get some new queens (maybe Italians are finally in) and try again, or just let these hatch out and see what happens...I'm loathe to spend any more money because I need to show a profit this year, although I suppose the Infernal Revenoors won't care if I jigger the books in the direction of showing *less* expense and *more income*- they want the guys that are gaming it the other way (but the Mrs., who is also my tax accountant, is going to be peeved because I just found some receipts from last year that didn't get recorded) and I still have 8 or 10 boxes of honey from last year that never got extracted and sold, which could be sold this year (if it isn't all crystallized- don't know, never left it this long before).
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