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Comment by Paul McCarty on December 3, 2012 at 9:41pm

My hybrid black bees and Russian-ish bees have totally shut down. The others, not so much. Very, very, grumpy. Cracked open a hive of my most gentle Sunkist Cordovans and they attacked me worse than any of my feral bees so far have done.

Comment by Diana Calkins on December 3, 2012 at 6:59pm

What are your BeeWeavers doing?

Comment by Rob Shepler on December 3, 2012 at 6:11pm

Mine are out and about, can't see that they are bringing in anything right now. It is REALLY DRY over on the east side of the Sacs, I am drying up and blowing away.

Some of my hives are still pretty big and full of bees, going through the stores quickly. The Carniolan queens have shut down and the population has dropped like a bomb, they are living up to their reputation.

Hope all is well with you and your bees!

Comment by Diana Calkins on December 3, 2012 at 5:36pm

Mine have a lot of activity, too.  What the heck are they finding this time of year???

Comment by Patricia Drake on December 3, 2012 at 2:40pm

My hives are still active on the warmer days.  It gets below freezing most nights now but the days are warming between 50-65 degrees. Too warm for November in the higher elevations of Otero County. One hive has over abundance of honey which I left for the winter. Newer hive I am feeding as they had just enough honey stores. I think I will check them this week if it warms up enough during the day.

Comment by Paul McCarty on November 29, 2012 at 1:35pm

How's everyone's bees doing so far during this "Winter"? Sometimes it is actually harder on them if it stays warm because they burn through their food supply. Everyone should be peeking in on them on the warmer days just to see how the food supply is holding up - especially you guys who did not give them "emergency feed".

I broke down and dumped several bags of sugar in each of my hives last week just in case. I had been feeding them strictly candy bricks and candy frames, but got a bit behind. I HATE cleaning out sugar in the Spring.

 

My hives are still pretty heavy on the honey, and hopefully they stay that way if they have candy/sugar to munch on. I'll harvest what's left of the honey in late Winter. Maples/Cottonwoods should be blooming here in late January or early Feb. Counting down the days...

Comment by Paul McCarty on October 31, 2012 at 9:22pm

Come to think of I, I really had more like 6 laying worker hives I had to deal with.

Comment by Paul McCarty on October 31, 2012 at 9:20pm

Just remember, a lot of dealing with situations such as this involves a calculated risk. There is always a danger it will not work, even feeding frames of open brood - which works, but seriously robs your other hives of strength. You could also just keep giving them queen cells above an excluder and hope it takes, but who has that many QC's.

Comment by Paul McCarty on October 31, 2012 at 9:14pm

I had 4 laying worker hives this year. I get them in my nucs all the time. I don't always shake them out. Most of the time just doing a newspaper combine with a queen-right nuc will fix it all up. Really all you have to do in most cases is put in three brood frames with a queen in the middle and normally they will straighten out.

Shaking out only works for me if I have a queen-right hive sitting in place of the old - and that is hazardous to the queen in that hive due to the bum-rush of bees.

I have lately been using a re-queening frame - like the one you get from brushy mountain. Works like a charm. Takes about a week and a half before you can let her out though.

You have to be careful shaking out hives, because in many cases there is a newly laying queen in them. They lay over and over in the same cells and look very similar to a laying worker hive. I get them doing that all the time. The only way to tell is to leave them be for a little while and see what happens.

A lot of my trap-outs go laying worker.

Comment by Rob Shepler on October 31, 2012 at 5:59pm

I have one in the same shape!

Question for our experts.......Is it necessary to shake out the bees to isolate a laying worker when doing a combine? Will the pheromones of the new queen be enough to overcome the laying worker? Anybody had experience with it?

Thanks!

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