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  • From: Blair Christian <blair.christian AT gmail.com>
  • To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [ocba] buzzing question...
  • Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:15:11 -0400

I made up some walkaway splits on March 10. It's my first time doing
it so early in the year.

calendar:
http://www.thebeeyard.org/cgi-bin/queencalendar.pl?month=3&day=10&year=2013

I had a bunch of nice capped queen cells (6 frames had decent
emergency cells) as of last weekend, and put together some 3 frame
mating nucs with internal feeders.

In pictures:

I took this deep box and made 2 nucs out of it on 3/10/13.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/106022773068627809372/albums/5710317851649430305/5853850288177878242
Those two nucs were almost solid nurse bees and capped brood, so I
started with 2 "cell builders" to draw some emergency queens cells.
It seemed that some of the bees had gone back to the original colony,
so I started rotating the locations of the hive/nucs
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/106022773068627809372/albums/5710317851649430305/5853850286434689682

Then I turned those 2 "cell builder" nucs into 5 mating nucs last weekend
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/106022773068627809372/albums/5710317851649430305/5856325618904924914
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/106022773068627809372/albums/5710317851649430305/5856325621418382850


Since these are walkaway, and there were probably some older larvae,
my guess is that it's possible a couple cells could be 1-2 days ahead
of the calendar. eg if the bees made a cell out of a 3 day old larvae
when I made the split, it would be scheduled to emerge today.

Yesterday I was smelling that lemony smell, so I'm not sure if there's
a queen in there already (a queen cell into a mating nuc that I didn't
see? An early emerger?), and this morning there was a pretty loud
buzz coming from a couple of the mating nucs.

I think some robbing has been going on, so I decreased the entrance
sizes on the nucs from 2"x3/8" to 3/8" x 3/8"... I didn't do a very
good job throughout the process. I'm pretty sure there are at least a
couple nucs that don't have enough bees in them and/or that got
chilled (time will tell).

I'm wondering if anybody has any ideas about the heavy buzzing sound I
heard this morning coming from the mating nucs- might it mean
something about conditions in there? The two that seemed to be the
loudest also had the most ventilation. Perhaps they were trying to
stay warm? I put on some 1" Styrofoam sheets on top of them to try to
hold the heat in (probably didn't do anything for the bees, but it
made me feel better). I have been rotating them left to right on the
hive stand to try to keep the number of foragers returning consistent
between them, but will stop now that the queens should be emerging.

Some of the weather forecasts look a little iffy for mating flights?
the forecasts vary between low 50s and mid 60s for highs next week.

Any thoughts on this poor man's queen rearing? I have five mating
nucs made out of 5 frame deep boxes, each with 1 empty frame of drawn
comb, and 2 frames of mixed capped brood/pollen/uncapped nectar, and
an internal feeder with 2-3 qts. There are probably a frame of nurse
bees in each one, as well as 1/4-1/2 frame foragers (wild guess).
I've seen some pollen going in, so they're not doing terribly; but I
saw at least one SHB larvae getting kicked out, so I could have a
nasty surprise in some of them...


Best,
Blair



  • [ocba] buzzing question..., Blair Christian, 03/20/2013

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