Baffled - help

[fragel]

Hello,

Looking for some advice, just inspected a hive and it has left me slightly baffled.

I started with a 6 frame over wintered nuc, they were put in a national hive with a super and ashforth feeder.

They have had this for 4 weeks now but are only on 8 frames in the brood box. I filled with two drawn comb and rest was foundation in the brood box. The super was completely foundation. They have drawn 40% of the super and have stored most of the 1:1 syrup there along with masses of pollen (in the super and less in the brood box).

The Brood contained mainly capped cells, the cluster was mainly capped brood with very few larvae or eggs. There were some standing upright eggs and I never saw the clipped and marked queen.

There were two uncapped queen cells (not sure if there was anything in them – forgot to check).

Any ideas?

[drumgerry]

Firstly - welcome to the forum!

And on to your situation - it's pretty hard to diagnose without seeing the hive to be honest. So whatever anyone tells you here can only be as accurate as the info you give us. Could you tell us whereabouts you are to start with? And do you have a mentor who could go through the hive with you to diagnose what's going on?

When you say "uncapped queen cells" - more info needed I'm afraid! At this time of year you need to be looking at these carefully. I would suggest that you do so asap. You need to see if they're charged with larvae and royal jelly. Or if empty and hatched you'll have lost a swarm (or two) recently - in the last couple of days as you have seen eggs. Or are they in fact queen cups with nothing in them? Those queen cells are the key to your situation and need to be looked at. If they are charged you need to look in your book or google artificial swarm and perform one. Those who say a first year nuc doesn't/shouldn't swarm may not have seen it happen like I have.

As to your syrup in the super - please keep those frames separate from any honey you intend to take off as you can't have syrup in your honey.

Best of luck!

[fragel]

Thanks Drumgerry, I am in Moray and looking to make friends with a mentor soon.

I was having abit of a mare with the smoker and took a break in poor weather to inspect. I will have a look at the earliest to see what is inside of the cells. The amount of pollen in the super struck me as odd, they do not want to draw out the foundation in the brood to continue laying?! - When I inspect tomorrow or the following day, should I spray the foundation with 1:1?

I am happy to keep the super frames separate as I am interested in more bee's than honey right now.

[Jon]

Take the super off and stop feeding syrup.
Put the super back on when the brood box is full of bees and has at least 8 frames of brood.
Bees like to work up and they will not draw frames of foundation on the outside of the brood box if they have storage space above.
This sounds like quite a weak colony.
How many frames of brood does it have.
May is one of the best foraging Months and there is no need to feed.
The bees will draw out the foundation as they need it without extra feeding at this time of year.

[drumgerry]

One thing you can do (although not everyone agrees with this) is move undrawn foundation closer to the centre of the broodnest to get the bees to start on it. And unless it's old, stale foundation you don't have to spray sugar syrup on it. Definitely not something to do in early Spring but ok at this time of year.

Also I would say that this year May hasn't been the best foraging month in North East Scotland so it's not inconceivable that a colony could be short of stores. A good rule of thumb for a full colony is if they have 2 deep frames of stores or equivalent they have enough to last them till your next inspection in a week's time when you can re-assess stores levels. If there are only 5 or 6 frames of bees though I'd be happy enough to leave them with one full deep frame of stores or equivalent (that means you add up all the bits of stores they have) for a week.

In terms of location I'm not too far from you probably. I live in Speyside (the Moray part) and I'm the secretary of Spey Beekeepers Association. There's also Moray Beekeepers Association which operates in the lower lying parts of Moray. I'd suggest you join one of these associations and attend some of their meetings where you can get advice from more experienced beekeepers. Spey Beeks next meeting is July 1st so that might not be soon enough for you.

[Jon]

No problem with that suggestion Gerry as long as the colony is strong enough and it's just a frame of foundation at a time.
Didn't know forage was poor in your area. It has been pretty good here and a lot of brood boxes are fairly clogged with stores.
One double brood colony we looked at last night had about 25-30 lbs of stores in each box and for some reason had moved very little up into the supers.

Too much space too early holds back colony development and this may be the problem here with a super added before the colony needs it.

[drumgerry]

Forage is ok here Jon - we've just had a few weeks of incessant rain!