Chaos In The Apiary

Grateful for thoughts on my analysis below.

The Events

• Big week at work: which left me only 15 mins to catch swarms during the day, no time to analyse and just having to combine colonies during the evening without too much thought
• Swarms (that I suspect were casts from south facing allotment hives) on 22, 24 and 25 May – but I had no time to count days since artificially swarming and since the combining to analyse what was going on
• Ran out of nucs on 22 May
• Combined two farmer field hives of unknown queen state using newspaper method to free up a 14×12 brood box
• Put two separate swarms in to two supers and combined on top of a hive that in the end had 3 separate colonies separated by newspaper
• I peaked at 10 colonies for a few days but am back down to 7 colonies
• I’ve done my analysis in the last few hours and feel a bit more in control and that I know what might have happened

24 May Swarm

This swarm escaped 10 minutes later and appeared as two swarms? Is this because of multiple virgin queens? Or just because sometime swarms just do this before deciding on one location to hang from?

Series of videos on the day:

My Last Nuc Box On 22 May

The Analysis

I had family obligations Saturday and Sunday and so it is only today, Monday 29th May, that I can actually read back over my hive notes and understand what happened.

The Swarms

Please read My Apiary notes for 22 May to 28 May 2017 for all the detail.

I had a quick look in the middle hive that had not been artificially swarmed as it had been starving earlier in the season and was in recovery.  I could not find the unmarked Queen but this hive had new eggs in it.  If this hive had swarmed it would have been the first large swarm on 22 May which I put in the nuc box n the farmer’s field.

I suspect all three, or at least the other two swarms, were casts, headed by virgin queens, from both of the two south facing hives.

At least the swarm on 24 May was a cast as I found two virgin queens and there could have been more.

I artificially swarmed these south facing hives on the 7 May and they were queen-less at that point (I know this as the queens were definitely left in the nucs). They would since have raised at least one queen and in this case, evidently more than one. This was 15 days ago. It takes 16 days for queen honeybee to hatch from an egg, so if they created a emergency queens with an egg that was already laid, we are in the right time frame, or if they had already started a queen cell we are also in the right time frame. Worker bees can hide virgin queens from other queens so that they can then create a caste with that queen up to a few weeks after they have hatched out.

The Combined Hives In Farmer’s Field

Please read My Apiary notes for 22 May to 28 May 2017 for all the detail.

In summary, I discovered that both boxes had laying queens before I combined 6 days ago and that the North facing hive must have always been Queen-right and the South facing hive must also have been Queen-right … when I had been sure both colonies had been Queen-less due to no eggs or brood.

Is My Analysis Correct?

Have I drawn the right conclusions? Were they more probably prime swarms rather than casts? Were the field hives always Queen-right?  Please comment.

The Outcome

• The field hives look to have combined OK and I hope will have let the 2017 queen survive. (Though I am a bit concerned why they are already raising more queen cells – which I removed)
• The stack of three colonies on one hive … looks to have combined OK, again, hopefully with a 2017 Queen leading the colony
• I have a spare nuc box again! Phew!
• One of the allotment hives looks to have complete 2 supers of honey with thin foundation! Wow! My hopes are once again raised for a large summer harvest!
• All colonies look on course to be productive in July
• Senen and I scraped out some honey from the supers where the swarms had been captured:

Plans

• According to the “track and trace” function on the transport company website, on the 1st June I can expect my two new Thermosolar Hives to arrive. These are much needed. I can then put the 2 nucs in the allotments into 2 full 14×12 hives and put the south facing colonies into the Thermosolar hives! Very, very exciting.  I will then be able to fully try out killed varroa without chemicals in these two hives.  I will also be able to free up a further 2 nuc boxes.
• I have got the two field hives into a good position to put into the Beehaus when it arrives early summer
• Add supers and put my feet up in June and July??? I guess not!

Read More

• Please read My Apiary notes for 22 May to 28 May 2017 for the detail of this week
• How-To Catch A Swarm
• How-To Hive A Swarm
• How-To Combine Hives
• Beehaus Review