Mike,
One plausible scenario is that all of that perpendicular comb in
the bottom boxes is drone comb. Given their druthers, bees want
about 10 percent of their brood to be drones, so if they are given
the chance to free-form the comb they'll make up for all the
worker-sized cells by building drone cells. That could explain the
big population of drones.
On top of that, swarm season is also drone-producing season. A
colony with sex on its mind will not only produce queen cells but
also lots of drones.
So, what you may be seeing is just a very productive, very
sex-minded colony, not one that is queenless with laying workers.
If they swarm then chances are that the new queen will come into
play just fine, no problem.
But if I were you, I would go into those bottom supers and clean
them up. If they are nothing but drone comb then you aren't out
anything. And if they are in the process of swarming and making a
new queen, those cells won't have much if any worker brood right
now either. Just make sure you don't accidentally destroy a queen
cell that has the next regent designate.
Just my 2 cents, from an arm-chair quarterback perspective. An
in-hive inspection may tell a completely different story.
Randall Austin
On 4/29/2016 4:13 PM, Michael Malecek wrote:
Last spring I moved
a neglected hive from a beekeeper's property to a community
garden. This beekeeper kept bees for a year or two, the hive
died, and it was left outside through the winter and spring.
In the spring of last year a swarm moved in and decided to
build comb perpendicular to the frames. This means the bottom
two medium supers are difficult to inspect since I can't
remove the frames without destroying the comb. After moving
this hive to the community garden it did well all of last year
and survived through the winter. In terms of bee population,
it is probably my strongest hive, currently.
I went in the hive yesterday and
encountered something I haven't seen in my 7 years of
beekeeping. This is an 8-frame hive with four medium supers
(the bottom two with the perpendicular comb, the top two
supers with normal frames). As I inspected the supers and went
deeper into the hive I saw more and more drones. It looked
like a lot at the top super, but they seemed to be pouring out
of the frames of the bottom two supers when I smoked them. In
the bottom supers it looked like drones made up almost half
the population. Granted it was midday and many of the workers
were out.
I looked at the bottoms of the
frames in the bottom two supers and did notice 3-5 queen
cells. A few looked like an unfinished version of the
"peanut", but the rest either looked like something emerged or
that it was aborted. The openings had that chewed up wax
appearance. It was too difficult for me to look for
supercedure cells since I couldn't remove the frames. I
couldn't see brood or eggs in the hive, but also couldn't
inspect the bottom two supers very well because of the
perpendicular comb.
My question is what to do next and
how did the hive get so many drones? Since I saw open queen
cells, do I let the situation play out and see if a new queen
starts laying in the next couple of weeks. Or is my hive
without a queen, meaning I should re-queen it quickly? Or is
it too late, I have too many laying workers that won't accept
a new queen? The hive has a lot of activity at the entrance,
has been storing a lot of nectar/honey, and seems to be
strong, so I'd like to keep them going.
- Mike M.
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