So far this year the hive hasn’t presented any problems but over the last few weeks the bees have been building queen cells and, after finding a couple of them capped, I started to get very nervous that I would lose them if they swarmed. At my weekly inspection last Monday I found a very nice queen cell and decided to split the hive to stop them swarming and to increase my potential honey harvest.
So on Tuesday morning I went to the site before work and did the best I could to perform an artificial swarm. This involves removing the queen and then replacing the brood box with a completely new one. The old box is moved a few feet away and any flying bees return to the new box on the old site, with the old queen. The box is bare so they think they’ve swarmed. The second hive contains the queen cell and the non-flying bees and will be left for three weeks in the hope the new queen will mate and start laying.
Everything seemed to go smoothly but, after reporting back to a more experienced bee-keeper I realised the queen excluder was above the new brood box and not underneath (to stop the queen trying to make a run for it). I had to go back and change it all round later that day. Now all I have to do is wait but the weather is poor and it may mean the queen doesn’t mate properly. Whatever happens, it’s a new learning curve and a chance to try to get better at techniques to increase the size of my apiary.
No comments:
Post a Comment