ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers
List archive
- From: annallys Goodwin-Landher <annallys AT hotmail.com>
- To: <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
- Cc: OCBA <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: Re: [ocba] Telling a mated from an unmated queen
- Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:31:51 -0500
Hi Randall,
No drones. The hive with brood were just capped, no eggs or larvae. Seems to be good stores of pollen, just not as much as I've seen in the past. All three hives workers are still bringing in pollen. Pollen may be the source of the problem as I took a frame of pollen from each of the stronger hives in August to help the smallest one. Yes, the changes in populations and behavior between the hives year to year keeps me on my toes. Regards, Annallys Goodwin-Landher PO Box 2744 Chapel Hill, NC 27515 919 933-9109 annallys AT hotmail.com Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:32:20 -0500 Subject: Re: [ocba] Telling a mated from an unmated queen From: ra41717 AT gmail.com To: annallys AT hotmail.com CC: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org Annallys, Queen bees don't have to be mated to lay eggs. If a queen hasn't mated, all you will get are drones (protruding cell caps). If she has mated, you should get mostly workers (flat cell caps). Different bee races vary with how they handle winter, and different bees of the same race vary from hive to hive. But in general, I don't expect (or want) to see a whole lot of bee brood right now. If your queen bees have read the right books, they'll be going into "shut down mode" for the winter. They don't need any extra mouths to feed right now. But they'll start laying again in mid/late January in order to build up the foraging army in time for the March honey flow. If it wasn't the onset of winter and you had queens but no brood, I would ask whether you have plenty of stored pollen in addition to nectar/honey. Bee-rearing requires a lot of protein (from pollen), and if a hive doesn't have enough the workers will eat the larvae and eggs. As long as you've got healthy-sized populations and abundant stored honey going into winter, you should be fine. Or not. But at this point there isn't a whole lot to do to help before next spring, except feeding sugar syrup if your honey stores are low. Randall Austin On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 11:31 AM, annallys Goodwin-Landher <annallys AT hotmail.com> wrote:
|
-
[ocba] Winter Reading,
Lewis Cauble, 11/28/2011
-
[ocba] Telling a mated from an unmated queen,
annallys Goodwin-Landher, 11/29/2011
- Re: [ocba] Telling a mated from an unmated queen, Lewis Cauble, 11/29/2011
-
Re: [ocba] Telling a mated from an unmated queen,
Randall Austin, 11/29/2011
- Re: [ocba] Telling a mated from an unmated queen, annallys Goodwin-Landher, 11/29/2011
-
[ocba] Telling a mated from an unmated queen,
annallys Goodwin-Landher, 11/29/2011
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.