So during this weekend's beekeeping session, I am completely bummed because I didn't see any brood in the hive. I'm fearing the worst, that either I injured the Queen at the last beekeeping inspection, or she may have swarmed. At the last inspection, I saw frame after frame of brood, so this is heartbreaking.
I did see brood inside the split that I made, so I decided to recombine the split to the original hive. In the split I saw 2 swarm cups and a supersedure cup empty, so a virgin queen was born and has mated. Hopefully, the hive will take to this Queen and she will be productive as the last one.
Despite all the disappointments, there was some good news, in the honey super there are 3 frames of honey! I can't wait until there are 10 frames of honey so we can do a harvest!
Sorry to hear this. If it happens again in the future, something you can do is take a frame of eggs and young brood from another hive and put that in to see what the bees do. If they build queen cells that indicates you have no queen, if they don't that suggests they have a queen. Sometimes queens can stop laying for a while.
ReplyDeleteI can imagine your disappointment about the queen :( Emily bee has great advice. Hopefully you'll be able to get them up and running again with a new queen.
ReplyDeleteWhen a hive is queenless and broodless the nurse bees become foragers. Don't let the stored honey trick you into thinking there's a flow on. My fingers are crossed for you and them.
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