Just to update you guys as your advice was very useful. Bought a flatpack national from thornes, spent the weekend builidng it and put a quick coat of primer on the outside (hope the bees dont mind). Queen is doing OK in the 6 frame nuc so transferred them all in the the national today...
Great. Well I've had to order a new hive from thornes so thats 10 days wait. I'll give some eggs to the hive from the nuc so they can requeen. Just hoping my queen doesnt get cabin fever in her nuc over the next 10 days and try to swarm
The advice has been excellent thank you
I meant introducing disease by having a virgin queen mate with a feral drone. But you're right she will have the traits I need. I'll probably be bad at finding her but I can have a go at marking in the spring maybe
Only thing stopping me is the availability of hives I think...
I'm very grateful...
I'm thinking of icreasing to two colonies... is it too late in the year to do that? I worry that I'll end up with two weak colonies instead of one strong one for the winter. Thank you so much for the suggestion. I'll see if there's a flatpack national in the bee supply shop today
Ok I'll do that tomorrow, thanks so much for the advice.
Do you think if I put the queen back in the hive she'll try to swarm now?? Because if I dont they hive bees are going to try making an emergency queen cell out of the eggs I give them which I dont really want unless it's absolutely...
I'm a fresh first year beekeeper, I'm 4 weeks in
I collected my nuc end of May and my bee supplier warned me it's a very swarmy year.
Last friday i saw 3 charged queen cells, still open. At this stage I was doing weekly inspections. In hindsight I'd probably added a super too late as they drew...