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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers
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- From: Lewis Cauble <lewis AT hivebody.com>
- To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: Re: [ocba] Advice on a weak hive
- Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 09:46:32 -0400 (EDT)
Amy,
The nice tight pattern of drone brood in your faltering colony would suggest an unmated or poorly mated queen. Let's see if the bees take advantage of the frame of brood that you gave them to make a new queen. Examine that frame about 4 days after you put it in and see if the bees have made queen cells. If they are making queen cells I believe they will handle the issue. It will take some time though. I would give your faltering hive a frame of capped brood from your strong hive about once every 2 weeks until you see eggs from your new queen just to keep the population of young bees up a bit.
If you discover that they are not making queen cells with the frame of brood that you gave them, I believe you will need to find and eliminate your poor queen. She may be hard to spot as she is likely unmated. From there you may introduce a purchased queen or add a frame of eggs from your good colony and let them raise a queen. Again, you will need to inject some capped brood periodically if you let them raise their own queen.
In your strong colony I would suggest moving a frame of foundation in to the middle of the brood nest so that they can draw it out and give the queen a place to lay. Keep the food on them. Each time you remove a frame of brood, replace it with foundation. Again...Keep the food on them.
Let us know what your faltering colony does with the frame of brood.
Lewis
On April 21, 2014 at 8:02 PM Amy Gusefski <amy.gusefski AT gmail.com> wrote:
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[ocba] Advice on a weak hive,
Amy Gusefski, 04/21/2014
- Re: [ocba] Advice on a weak hive, Lewis Cauble, 04/22/2014
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