White Eyed Drone

Thanks @Dane Attwood for the comments,, much appreciated. Especially the reader that I’ll need to leave enough honey on for 2 brood boxes vs my usual one. I’m mindful of the Tutin test requirement thx, I get all honey tested through the bee club each year. Is it your experience that over supering vs under supering is best?, or is it a loads of different opinions area? My thoughts were that it’s a shorter distant for foragers from the entrance, and closer should the bees want to move some up from the brood boxes.

Thanks @M4tt. My only thought re splitting was so they didn’t swarm (and its fun to create new queens). I have enough hives so wont split. Look8mg forward to having a solid strong hive going into winter. cheers

I'd really appreciate advice from learned beekeepers please... I have three questions (which I'll explain): 1) As the 2 Full Deep boxes are almost full, should I be looking to split the hive? 2) If so, Can I use 2 queen excluders to locate the queen?. 2) Should I extract or leave a specific frame? Any other thoughts much appreciated... Background: This is my third bee keeping season, I started with a weak nuc April 17, and through walk away splits, I now have 3 strong hives one with two brood boxes, the other two are singles. The first picture shows my strongest hive I have (ever had): 2 Full deep brood boxes and 2 x 3/4 supers. The top super is almost full and just needs some capping so I intend to remove and extract in the next week, and the under super is largely empty. It's the strongest hive that I've ever had, and I'm finding the hive management a bit of a challenge as the two full deeps are almost full of brood (8 frames), loads of pollen (6 frames), and the rest honey as full frames or bulging around brood. I'm nervous about the hive swarming, as there is very little space left. There are no swarm cells. with the high volume of bees, especially angry ones, I have been unable to locate the queen in the last 3 inspections. Q1) Should I be worried about swarming due to lack of space? (or is it too late in the season?), and therefore consider splitting? Q2) If looking to split, to locate the queen, can I use two queen excluders, one above and below the top brood box?, and then check for eggs in Brood box 1, 2, to know where the queen is? or is there a better method?. Q3) If I wanted to, can I extract this frame? / what is the impact of pollen in extracted frames? This frame is from the top brood box. There is honey around the outside, but I'm most interested in what was previously the brood area. I hear that bees don't cap pollen, but hear that bees can put nectar on top of pollen in cells. My inclination is to leave the frame for the bees over winter. If I wanted to extract the frame, could I?. I guess I'm asking, what is the impact of pollen in honey?. Any comments, much appreciated (still on my learning journey ;)) As an aside, and for a laugh, in my last inspection, I gloved up (leather instead of nitrile milking gloves) as I knew there was a bit of honey for the bees to protect. The hive was certainly on alert when I was removing frames to check for swarm cells, and I was feeling invincible, until.... I regretted my over confidence in wearing my ankle length socks when I was stung on my ankle below my suit and inside my long gumboots. two days later my ankle is still swollen. (it took me 2 minutes until I would find a bees free environment to remove the sting).

Yes @Beefriendly, looking forward to the detective work. Learning is one of the best things about beekeeping, and life...

Yeah thanks M4tt, just saw that in another post. Feeder frame in, will hold off on adding syrup.

Thx, @yesbut, this seems to be around 3FD, so therefore not impossible to be from my non marked queen hive. I’ll be keen to see for sure over the coming weeks if was from mine or other hives. Collecting experience!

I’m also thinking from the same hive, I thought I’d open up both nucs to put feeders in ahead of moving to new locations tonight. No bees in one of them, so I’m guessing that being in two very close locations on the tree was just dopue to space. If we’re on the branch with the queen would be too heavy? this being the first swarm that I’ve seen, I have no real judgement yet for the size of a swarm, so whether large, small etc. good fun though (even if catching my own)...

I found 2 swarms today in my apiary, about 1 m apart, one larger than the other, both low down and on easy to cut branches. I put them into seperate Nuc's. The larger one had an unmarked queen which I caught and transfered to the nuc box before shaking in the bees. I'm not sure whether the second swarm had a queen. A few hours on, both seem happy in the nuc boxes. My first swarm captures ? Swarms top left (ball), bottom right (along branch). Q1) Would the swarms likely be from the same hive, or separate?. Q2) is it likely that the swarm(s) came from elsewhere - not my apiary?. With both swarms being on the edge of my apiary, I naturally thought that they were swarms from one or two of my hives. I can think I have alabi's for each hive. I have: 1) 1 x FD with autumn (marked) queen laying well - so the larger swarm was not from that queen. 2) 1 x FD which had 12 Queen cells a week or two ago - I kept 2 in the hive, created a few 2 frame splits in my queen castle, and removed the rest. 1 or both queens would have emerged a week ago. Although I'm leaving them to themselves for now, I had a quick peak today and there are loads of bees and stores in the hive, similar to when i checked two weeks ago. So I don't think the volume of bees could come from that hive. QC) Queen castle with 4 x 2 frame splits 2 have new laying queens, 2 had queen cells, will leave for a few weeks before knowing if they are queen right. Had too few bees to be either swarm, and entrance activity is similar to the last few weeks. Nuc 1) An early spring split, queen laying well, still with the same amount of bees. As always, thoughts and advice much appreciated...

That’s the great thing about bee keeping right?, the same situation in different years / locations / seasons has the potential to play out very differently. The “no substitute for experience” part of bee keeping is one of the best things - we never stop learning!

Thanks for the advice all. Plenty of things for me to consider for next time. Cheers

Thanks all for the comments / thoughts. M4tt - I didn’t realise that bees would move eggs, so much to learn!.

Trev - after 70 views, you are the first to reply, and I bet it’s appreciated. Thanks for contributing here for us new beeks, and for the videos. Very generous of you to be sharing your knowledge. Cheers

A week ago I created a split in my queen castle using 2 frames of eggs, brood of all stages and stores. I didn’t want to risk the brood getting cold / not covered, so I added a frame of nurse bees from a different hive. At the time they seemed to get on ok. A week later, half have died, and the other are very weak. I’m thinking they could have fought, tried to steal the reserves etc. any thoughts?

I've just found a capped queen cell in the underside (recess) of the Ecrotek top feeder on a hive that I split last Autumn. I've had the bees build comb into the underside of the feeder before, but not lay in it. At the start of spring, the hive was growing fast and using up a lot of the winter stores so I put the top feeder on to help build stores ahead of the flow. The bees stored the syrup and last week when I was planning to take the top feeder off I noticed a lot of comb on the underside (in the recess) and larvae, and couldn't find the Queen in the brood box. Not wanting to risk losing the queen, I left on the feeder for a further week (with no syrup), to hopefully locate the Queen in the next inspection allowing me to then remove the feeder. Today I found a queen cell under the top feeder, also found the queen in the brood box, and lots of eggs and larvae so she seems to be laying strongly. I thought about it for a while and then cut out the queen cell (and surounds) and hung it between the top of two frames facing downwards - in one section of my queen castle (4 x 2 frame), where a week ago I placed two frames of eggs, a range of brood and nurse bees. Athough I have two frames of bees happily gathering pollen and nectar in the queen castle "room" there is no queen cell, so I thought I'd help them out... 1) Any thoughts on why I had the queen lay / queen cell in the top feeder? - e.g. is a cell facing downwards just too tempting not to? (there are spare frames in the brood box) 2) Does anyone use a queen excluder with a top feeder to avoid laying?. 3) What would you have done in my situation? photos below of the queen cell, eggs

Same here, the kids (and I) look forward to seeing “snow” on the trees making for a white Christmas. Then soon after the petals shed and mess up my pool. First world problem.