Showing posts with label queen cell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label queen cell. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Oh Crap...Probably screwed up

My one remaining beehive is still a mess in my book so today I just did what I wanted to do.  If it works it works..if not, another lesson learned.

I put a honey super on the brood box a few weeks ago because my brood box looked to be honey bound.  It had very little capped brood and only saw a few eggs.  There was not much room at all for the queen to lay any eggs if she had wanted too.  I took their sugar water away so they would eat some of the stored honey to give the queen more room.

To begin with I had a queen excluder between the brood and super.  After doing much reading, I decided to remove it.  Today when I checked the hive I thought I saw eggs in the super, later when I went back I couldn't find any.  I also found what I am almost 99% sure is a queen cell on one of the frames in the brood box, it was not capped and I could see the larva.

I just took a nuc box and put the frame with what I think is a queen cell on it and other capped brood.  I also put a frame of honey and 3 empty frames to make a total of five in the nuc. I shook a couple of frames of bees into the nuc. I put 2 empty frames in the brood box to replace the ones I took out.  I added another honey super and a queen excluder this time. I then closed everything up.

I am not worried about the main hive as there are lots of bees and lots of honey in it.  I'm worried about the little nuc.  Don't know if I put enough bees in there to keep them warm on our cool nights.  Worried that it may not be a queen cell and I did not see any eggs for the workers to make a queen.  Worried that the bees will desert the little nuc and go back to the main hive.  Our bee club suggest moving nucs 2 1/2 miles away for a couple of week, other folks don't so I am not going to. Jut plain old worried if I did the right thing.

Search This Blog