I am now a Beekeeper!!
Discussion
Jambo85 said:
Bugger! My money would be on a sealed QC somewhere, did you grub out all the started ones when you did the Demaree?
You'd get odds on with that bet but i'm 100% certain the queen on a single frame of brood (and all other frames being brand new) had no QC's even the few drone cells I dug out! The top brood box I shook off all bees and did similar and besides any queen in the top box would have had to get through two queen excluders to get out!Probably go into hive tomorrow to find out what I can - the camera will be rolling lol
Cheers Jambo and Looney 
quick update: didn't get chance to go in today but had a brainwave just now and ventured out with my thermal camera..................
Fairly conclusive that indeed the original queen (bottom box) has gone with her attendants and all activity is now with the old brood upstairs.
Assuming that is the case and assuming they're creating emergency queen cells is there an argument to leave alone to fight it out? Thinking is this would avoid them cast swarming to oblivion as they'd have to get through both queen excluders to get out!
quick update: didn't get chance to go in today but had a brainwave just now and ventured out with my thermal camera..................Fairly conclusive that indeed the original queen (bottom box) has gone with her attendants and all activity is now with the old brood upstairs.
Assuming that is the case and assuming they're creating emergency queen cells is there an argument to leave alone to fight it out? Thinking is this would avoid them cast swarming to oblivion as they'd have to get through both queen excluders to get out!
Many thanks for the input guys. Here's an update (snipped from a post I did for my association whattsapp page)
Dated 29/04/2022..........
It's almost a week since my swarm on the Demaree hive so yesterday I broke it down. No sign of the queen (no surprise there) in the bottom brood box. The single frame still has some unhatched brood and covered by nurse bees. Hardly any attempt to draw out the empty frames though which is a shame.
I put the main brood box back down below expecting to find several virgin queens darting around but none that I could see. There was however 4 or 5 fully capped queen cells so decided to pinch all but the best looking one. If I'm lucky the single queen cell is viable and will hatch and mate. If i'm unlucky there are virgin queen/s and they cast swarm the hive into oblivion!!
Also noticed they were back filling the main brood box with nectar and is close to being honey bound. Decided to set it up as double brood as there is still a frame of capped brood in it and obviously plenty of space for the future.
I may well be buying a mated queen soon rather than play the waiting game 🤪
Another 35 minutes of boredom for you
Dated 29/04/2022..........
It's almost a week since my swarm on the Demaree hive so yesterday I broke it down. No sign of the queen (no surprise there) in the bottom brood box. The single frame still has some unhatched brood and covered by nurse bees. Hardly any attempt to draw out the empty frames though which is a shame.
I put the main brood box back down below expecting to find several virgin queens darting around but none that I could see. There was however 4 or 5 fully capped queen cells so decided to pinch all but the best looking one. If I'm lucky the single queen cell is viable and will hatch and mate. If i'm unlucky there are virgin queen/s and they cast swarm the hive into oblivion!!
Also noticed they were back filling the main brood box with nectar and is close to being honey bound. Decided to set it up as double brood as there is still a frame of capped brood in it and obviously plenty of space for the future.
I may well be buying a mated queen soon rather than play the waiting game 🤪
Another 35 minutes of boredom for you
Update on that hive ^^^ Noticed a sharp drop in weight (1.5Kg) this afternoon! So their must've been a virgin queen that I missed or the capped queen cell I left in there has emerged and buggered off. New queen ordered for delivery this Saturday. I could've reared my own queen from the other hives but that's time lost and I really want to give my Flow Frames a good test this season.
Bill said:
We've had a bit of disappointment. One hive hasn't been thriving and we noticed a couple with deformed wings. Got hold of apiguard but before we got it in place noticed a fair few dead bees outside the entrance.
Open it up and they're clearly not well. Lots of trembling, a few more with deformed wings and another load dead in the bottom. Conclusion from helpful bee bloke is chronic bee paralysis virus.
So we've move the affected hive to separate it from the other (2ft at a time) and done a bush bash to get rid of the most sickly. Plan to do another move tomorrow...
Sad news Bill. Note though that CBPV and Deformed wing virus are different things. Deformed Wing is usually associated with Varroa but CBBV isn't. Open it up and they're clearly not well. Lots of trembling, a few more with deformed wings and another load dead in the bottom. Conclusion from helpful bee bloke is chronic bee paralysis virus.
So we've move the affected hive to separate it from the other (2ft at a time) and done a bush bash to get rid of the most sickly. Plan to do another move tomorrow...
Personally I'd move them as far away as you can straight away and ignore the "3 foot or 3 mile" rule! Lock them in for a couple of days and they will re-orientate.
Jambo85 said:
dickymint said:
Update on that hive ^^^ Noticed a sharp drop in weight (1.5Kg) this afternoon! So their must've been a virgin queen that I missed or the capped queen cell I left in there has emerged and buggered off. New queen ordered for delivery this Saturday. I could've reared my own queen from the other hives but that's time lost and I really want to give my Flow Frames a good test this season.
Ah bugger - makes you wonder what happens that we have no idea about on hives without the sensors!!Have you popped a frame of eggs in to confirm queenless?
Playing devils advocate - bees will quite happily make supercedure cells whilst they still have a laying queen so how does adding a frame of eggs/larvae prove a queenless hive?
Re sensors - Yes indeed. Without the scales on this hive there is absolutely no way I would have known about this cast swarm. I was at the hive an hour before the event and again after I saw the data and it was just like nothing had happened!
Jambo85 said:
dickymint said:
Jambo85 said:
dickymint said:
Update on that hive ^^^ Noticed a sharp drop in weight (1.5Kg) this afternoon! So their must've been a virgin queen that I missed or the capped queen cell I left in there has emerged and buggered off. New queen ordered for delivery this Saturday. I could've reared my own queen from the other hives but that's time lost and I really want to give my Flow Frames a good test this season.
Ah bugger - makes you wonder what happens that we have no idea about on hives without the sensors!!Have you popped a frame of eggs in to confirm queenless?
Playing devils advocate - bees will quite happily make supercedure cells whilst they still have a laying queen so how does adding a frame of eggs/larvae prove a queenless hive?
Introducing a laying queen is something that is widely accepted to have a fairly low success rate - number one reason for failure is introducing them into hives that are not queenless
Re-reading your question, I suppose you're right, proving queenless is something that is impossible to do with 100% certainty, but proving that they're not queen-right (i.e. that they do pull some emergency cells on the test frame) is usually good enough
If they have a virgin running around they won't accept a strange laying queen and you won't see any eggs.
What is intriguing me is being able to look at the audio data in real-time after I put the lid on
Bill said:
Well that's been a torrid few hours!
We opened our diseased hive and found them looking much happier after the bush bash, but the queen was dead in the bottom. So closed it up while we looked at the other.
We've been distracted so it's been a while since we had a proper look but found the queen and a couple of queen cells in the super. Then in the brood box we found another 15+ cells! So we closed up and phoned (well, whatsapped...) a friend!
Upshot is we moved the queen and 6 frames into a nuc, left two good queen cells in the original hive and moved a frame with 2 queen cells (one hatching as we moved it!) into the diseased hive. (Killing all the other queens...)
Could do with a gin now!
Spot on i'll drink to that well played We opened our diseased hive and found them looking much happier after the bush bash, but the queen was dead in the bottom. So closed it up while we looked at the other.
We've been distracted so it's been a while since we had a proper look but found the queen and a couple of queen cells in the super. Then in the brood box we found another 15+ cells! So we closed up and phoned (well, whatsapped...) a friend!
Upshot is we moved the queen and 6 frames into a nuc, left two good queen cells in the original hive and moved a frame with 2 queen cells (one hatching as we moved it!) into the diseased hive. (Killing all the other queens...)
Could do with a gin now!
Turn7 said:
dickymint said:
New queen introduced yesterday to the failed Demaree hive...............
Whats actually happening here Dicky ? Are they trying to investigate/kill/feed the new Queen ?With that in mind it's risky (she cost me 35 quid) to just pop a queen into a hive to find out so these cages are blocked up with sugar fondant which the bees have to eat their way through to release the queen - this delays her escape by which time the colony has gotten used to her pheromones and accepts her.
Hopefully i have science on my side using internal hive sensors that give me, in realtime, audio data as to what's going on which so far is looking good.......
Released the new queen a couple of hours ago. If you go by "the book" it's recommended to just pull the tabs and let the bees eat their way through the fondant which takes around 3 days for her to be out. But so confident am I, that the audio data over the last two days is good, I just let her out to start laying.
Took the opportunity to take a look at my other Flowhive - weight change over the last 7 days shows an increase of 3.28kg so I wanted to know if they were storing this in the Flow super and not the brood box. Happy days and yum yum
Took the opportunity to take a look at my other Flowhive - weight change over the last 7 days shows an increase of 3.28kg so I wanted to know if they were storing this in the Flow super and not the brood box. Happy days and yum yum
LooneyTunes said:
Well, the one that wanted to swarm decided to go. I need to fish through the original and see if I missed a queen cell. I thought I’d squished them all a few days ago but, given I’d been lazy about finding my boots and had been stung on the ankle by a couple of our nasty bees (looking forward to those being replaced as the new queen’s eggs start emerging) and had a friendly one crawling up inside my trouser leg at the time, I was a bit distracted!
Fortunately they settled on a raised bed a few metres from the hive and are now locked away in a spare nuc box.
Having decided a couple of weeks ago that we had enough bees, I’ve done the only sensible thing and ordered two more hives. Trying the Swienty poly hives this time as they’re meant to be compatible with the nationals (so I’ll have four more supers to run at), are much cheaper than cedars, and should allow us to site them in cooler areas. But that really is enough.
Fortunately they settled on a raised bed a few metres from the hive and are now locked away in a spare nuc box.
Having decided a couple of weeks ago that we had enough bees, I’ve done the only sensible thing and ordered two more hives. Trying the Swienty poly hives this time as they’re meant to be compatible with the nationals (so I’ll have four more supers to run at), are much cheaper than cedars, and should allow us to site them in cooler areas. But that really is enough.
To be honest I was quite relieved when my prime swarm was last seen flying towards town before I could capture them
Turn7 said:
dickymint said:
LooneyTunes said:
Well, the one that wanted to swarm decided to go. I need to fish through the original and see if I missed a queen cell. I thought I’d squished them all a few days ago but, given I’d been lazy about finding my boots and had been stung on the ankle by a couple of our nasty bees (looking forward to those being replaced as the new queen’s eggs start emerging) and had a friendly one crawling up inside my trouser leg at the time, I was a bit distracted!
Fortunately they settled on a raised bed a few metres from the hive and are now locked away in a spare nuc box.
Having decided a couple of weeks ago that we had enough bees, I’ve done the only sensible thing and ordered two more hives. Trying the Swienty poly hives this time as they’re meant to be compatible with the nationals (so I’ll have four more supers to run at), are much cheaper than cedars, and should allow us to site them in cooler areas. But that really is enough.
Fortunately they settled on a raised bed a few metres from the hive and are now locked away in a spare nuc box.
Having decided a couple of weeks ago that we had enough bees, I’ve done the only sensible thing and ordered two more hives. Trying the Swienty poly hives this time as they’re meant to be compatible with the nationals (so I’ll have four more supers to run at), are much cheaper than cedars, and should allow us to site them in cooler areas. But that really is enough.
To be honest I was quite relieved when my prime swarm was last seen flying towards town before I could capture them
Not mine officer "iv'e counted them out and counted them in". !!
Talking of tech, here's some data of the hive that was re-queened on the 10th May........
|https://thumbsnap.com/gmsqrYfp[/url]
Note the peaks around 400Hz on the left. This was immediately before I put the queen in but still caged. That particular frequency is an indication that all is not well queenwise). I released her two days later on the strength of that frequency no longer there. It still holds true today.
Early days yet but what I'm looking for in this temperature graph is for it to be a flatter line around 35C. This would indicate that the nurse bees are caring for brood and regulating their temperature. As it stands the internal temperature is following the external temperature. Early days yet for her to start laying but hopefully another week should be telling.
Now of course I could always suit up and fire up the smoker but my aims are to be much less invasive (you could call it lazy) which can only benefit the bees. I read somewhere that every time you open up a hive or even tap on the sides (many beekeepers suggest to give them a tap during winter to hear them roar as signs of life!) but what do bees do when smoked or disturbed? They go straight for their stores and gorge themselves (as they do prior to swarming) this is wasted stores for them and us. So worth bearing in mind the next time you disturb a hive that's around a cup full of nectar burnt up.
|https://thumbsnap.com/gmsqrYfp[/url]Note the peaks around 400Hz on the left. This was immediately before I put the queen in but still caged. That particular frequency is an indication that all is not well queenwise). I released her two days later on the strength of that frequency no longer there. It still holds true today.
Early days yet but what I'm looking for in this temperature graph is for it to be a flatter line around 35C. This would indicate that the nurse bees are caring for brood and regulating their temperature. As it stands the internal temperature is following the external temperature. Early days yet for her to start laying but hopefully another week should be telling.
Now of course I could always suit up and fire up the smoker but my aims are to be much less invasive (you could call it lazy) which can only benefit the bees. I read somewhere that every time you open up a hive or even tap on the sides (many beekeepers suggest to give them a tap during winter to hear them roar as signs of life!) but what do bees do when smoked or disturbed? They go straight for their stores and gorge themselves (as they do prior to swarming) this is wasted stores for them and us. So worth bearing in mind the next time you disturb a hive that's around a cup full of nectar burnt up.
Update on my re-queened hive.
Timeline:
24th April - prime swarm
29th April - broke down Demaree and full inspection - no queen
4th May - probable cast swarm
8th May - full inspection - queenless - introduced new marked and mated queen (caged)
10th May - Queen released
22nd May - full inspection, couldn't see her and no larva or eggs!!
Two days ago (29th May) armed with another new queen (that's another 40 quid!!) did another full inspection. Four frames in and blow me one side 3/4 full of capped brood. I was absolutely gob smacked! Fifth frame in it gets weirder - found a queen scurrying around and getting on with here business, a very dark queen (my bees all stem from a nuc of Welsh Blacks) unmarked and obviously not the Buckfast F1........closed the hive up and cracked open several cans of Thatchers Cider
Gutted that due to banana fingers I didn't start the video correctly as the commentary would have been hilarious
Timeline:
24th April - prime swarm
29th April - broke down Demaree and full inspection - no queen
4th May - probable cast swarm
8th May - full inspection - queenless - introduced new marked and mated queen (caged)
10th May - Queen released
22nd May - full inspection, couldn't see her and no larva or eggs!!
Two days ago (29th May) armed with another new queen (that's another 40 quid!!) did another full inspection. Four frames in and blow me one side 3/4 full of capped brood. I was absolutely gob smacked! Fifth frame in it gets weirder - found a queen scurrying around and getting on with here business, a very dark queen (my bees all stem from a nuc of Welsh Blacks) unmarked and obviously not the Buckfast F1........closed the hive up and cracked open several cans of Thatchers Cider
Gutted that due to banana fingers I didn't start the video correctly as the commentary would have been hilarious
LooneyTunes said:
That all begs the question… what are you going to do with the extra queen? Another hive?
We’ve had a crazy few days with unhelpful bouts of rain so I’ll confess to only having done quite quick cursory looks through all of the hives for a while.
Our swarm is happily living in the nuc box, and the queen is laying away, so going to be transferring to a new poly hive in the next few days. The big unknown is what will be in the original hive. Still seems to be lots of activity and with other commitments/weather have been forced to work on the basis that they’ve raised a new queen, hopefully mated with one of our better lines. Will hopefully find out tomorrow!
Hoping to get in there tomorrow for a look through after I’ve built the new hive and a few more frames/supers.
Must order jars (but keep forgetting) as we’re getting closer to first extract.
I didn't want to disrupt my other Flowhive as it's doing well and I'm determined to have a proper harvest this year with the Flow super. My other hive is a WBC (also going great guns) i want to close down to do away with Nationals - it's a real pain in the arse running incompatible kit. We’ve had a crazy few days with unhelpful bouts of rain so I’ll confess to only having done quite quick cursory looks through all of the hives for a while.
Our swarm is happily living in the nuc box, and the queen is laying away, so going to be transferring to a new poly hive in the next few days. The big unknown is what will be in the original hive. Still seems to be lots of activity and with other commitments/weather have been forced to work on the basis that they’ve raised a new queen, hopefully mated with one of our better lines. Will hopefully find out tomorrow!
Hoping to get in there tomorrow for a look through after I’ve built the new hive and a few more frames/supers.
Must order jars (but keep forgetting) as we’re getting closer to first extract.
A quick call to my association and the new queen is now safely housed at the clubs apiary = many brownie points in the bank I van call on
Good luck tomorrow keep us updated. I think you would've had some really warm days since the prime swarm? If so they would've cast if they're going to.
LooneyTunes said:
It doesn’t happen often, usually just a couple of times a year for me, and you build up a bit of tolerance. Last year only the one sting (and it was someone else’s bee and I was nowhere near the hives!). Today was the worst I’ve had: six stings, five to one wrist, one to the other. Only noticed the first one or two and that was surprise more than anything as they’ve never got me there before.
The bees don’t usually want to sting you and it tends to happen when you make a mistake that worries them (being a bit too quick or heavy handed). Try to be pretty chilled around them but still usually suit up except if just feeding the quieter ones.
Similar here with the stings. Only had 5 or 6 since I started keeping and only to my hands through nitrile gloves. I switched to these...........The bees don’t usually want to sting you and it tends to happen when you make a mistake that worries them (being a bit too quick or heavy handed). Try to be pretty chilled around them but still usually suit up except if just feeding the quieter ones.
Which are good as long as you order a tight fit so they don't get snagged under the frame lugs. I've just ordered a box of these to try next as I've heard good reviews as they're thicker than most nitrile................
https://gwenyngruffydd.co.uk/products/nitrile-heav...
LooneyTunes said:
I tend to double nitrile, and have only ever been stung once through those, but the long cuff versions have been unobtainable since the start of covid (which forced a switch to the shorter ones). The leather ones are too thick and unwieldy.
Out of interest, where did you get the ones in your pic? They look like they might be a decent compromise until I can get some longer nitriles again.
https://beekeeping.co.uk/products/latex-glovesOut of interest, where did you get the ones in your pic? They look like they might be a decent compromise until I can get some longer nitriles again.
They are good - available in loads of different sizes not just the usual small, medium and large. I can't find the site but there is one that shows you how to size them. I'd suggest go for one size lower for a tight fit. The other big plus with these are they have a thin cotton lining in the hands that helps with sweat.
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