Comment

Comment by Paul McCarty on April 15, 2013 at 5:46pm

My domestic queens never seem to last.

Comment by Paul McCarty on April 15, 2013 at 5:45pm

I have a couple of 2 and 3 year old queens. They are feral-ish bees though.

Comment by Rob Shepler on April 15, 2013 at 5:08pm

James I had a lot of that last year, what I thought was a perfectly good queen got superceded over and over. It is one of the mysteries I would love to hear more feed back on. 35 years ago, a good queen would last for 3 or 4 years most of the time. What is happening? What has changed?

Comment by James H DAWDY on April 15, 2013 at 5:02pm

The Beeweavers have really taken off.  One hive has 2 full frames of capped brood since I installed the package 2 weeks ago (they had drawn comb from a starved out hive).  The other is queenless(!) but there are a ton of queen cells, so the girls are already on top of it.  Not sure what happened to the queen- maybe they balled her, although she layed plenty before she died.

Comment by James H DAWDY on April 15, 2013 at 4:07pm

Rob- thanks, pretty much what I planned on.  I had split the a hive before I combined it with the cutout, and put the old queen in a nuc.  She's a year old that I got from a local commercial beek, and her laying pattern is getting really spotty, so I thought I'd pinch her and drop those cells into the nuc.

Comment by Rob Shepler on April 15, 2013 at 3:40pm

James give her another week or two to harden off, 21 days from hatch is a good rule of thumb before making a decision about her. If she is worth her salt, she will take care of those other cells. You might pull the other cells and set up a nuc as a back up, even just that frame and one of honey would do it. It never hurts to have a nuc to pop in should you have a failure to requeen!

Comment by Bev Eckman-Onyskow on April 15, 2013 at 1:50pm

HI, I'm  Bev, and I'm bringing in bees from Phil Noble in California.  Is anyone interested in ordering, to reduce the freight?  Rob says they are great bees, and Phil said this will probably be his last shipment, this week or next week.

Comment by James H DAWDY on April 15, 2013 at 12:06pm

Here's the emergency queen from the cells I posted about.  She hatched on ~4/8 and I did a newspaper combine with a queenless hive.  She doesn't appear to be laying but seems bigger, so I assume she's mated.   There are some queen cells on a comb in the hive body of the joined hive.  Is she slow to start or just poorly mated?

Comment by Paul McCarty on April 14, 2013 at 5:38pm

Just have to be quick! I fed my desert hives my last honey frames, and split two of my mountain hives today. Sometimes you just have to do it. I have done it in the rain before too. Weather is not much of a factor for me most of the time unless it is too cold. If I miss a weekend, it sets me back.

They were actually very well behaved today.

Comment by Diana Calkins on April 14, 2013 at 3:43pm

Paul, with this wind?  How do you manage it?

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 13
• 14
• 15
• 16
• 17
• …
• 61
• Next ›
• Page