[ocba] Queen Cells

Dan Kyburz dkyburzus at gmail.com
Tue May 8 13:39:07 EDT 2012


Newbie giving his 2 cents, but I would.

A)     Make sure you can find a queen or at least eggs or have someone help
you in locating them.  If not I would install a new queen since the queen
cups were destroyed.  (Did they have eggs or royal jelly in them?)

B)     Possibly give them more room by adding another medium super on top.
Especially if you think there are questionably building swarm cells.  Wasn't
sure which edge you are referring to.  I've found that I have waited to long
to add more space.  You may also consider rotating your empty frames more
inward.

Best of luck,

Dan

 

From: ocba-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:ocba-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org]
On Behalf Of Thomas Grizzle
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 1:16 PM
To: ocba at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [ocba] Queen Cells

 

Hi All,

 

Take everything I am about to say with a grain of salt.  A newbee is talking
here.

 

I am 3.5 weeks into installing a bee box and queen (from Busy Bee) into a
single new 10-frame hive with nothing but foundation.  I fed them the
equivalent of two 5 pound bags of sugar and stopped feeding them at that
point.  Today I went into the hive to check it out.  

 

There appeared to be more bees than I installed, that's the first thing I
noted.  There is honey stored away on parts of a few frames, and capped
brood were visible.  I find searching for a queen a hopeless endeavor.  It
is like looking at a giant oak tree on a breezy day and trying to find the
biggest leaf.  Ain't gonna happen.  That aside, I went through all 10 frames
and found 4 queen cells, one in the middle of a frame, one more to the edge
but not on the edge, and two on edges.  I destroyed all four.  Too late it
occurred to me that I might have a failing queen and they were trying to
"fix things."

 

There were still two frames with no comb drawn out, so they are not
overcrowded.  My Chapel Hill site is in a neighborhood next to a rather
large forest (for in-town), the American Legion woods.about 20 acres, I'd
estimate, and there are poplar trees here I am certain.  Water is not a
problem.  Anyway.

 

What should I do?  Let them be(e) seems like the best option at this point. 

 

Tom Grizzle

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/ocba/attachments/20120508/2239a77e/attachment.html 


More information about the ocba mailing list