herefordshirehoney
Field Bee
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2011
- Messages
- 649
- Reaction score
- 2
- Location
- Hereford
- Hive Type
- Langstroth
- Number of Hives
- 3 poly langstroths
I did an artificial swarm a few weeks ago (well technical it was pretty much a split as didn't bother moving hive side to side to equalise numbers as this queen is a very strong layer).
Old queen 2013 queen brought aug last year is upto 5 frames of brood already and bees have backfilled all other frames with OSR, will be supering tomorrow as i'm extracting tomorrow (not enough equipment to super today).
With the old colony I choose the best queencell I thought and removed the rest a week later from the AS. Last weekend I checked and it had emerged although couldn't find her which was about the 8 days mark from capping. I've put clearer boards on this colony this morning to take 3 OSR supers off but was going to leave this alone till next weekend apart from the extraction tomorrow.
I'm also tempted to put in a test frame to confirm this next week so I can make sure I have a backup plan because of the time it takes to raise a new queen.
My question is when do I reunite with the original bees, effective am I right in thinking ideally after 2 full brood cycles (so early/mid july assuming the queen gets mated). Basically I want a summer honey crop and in order to get my best chance at this I need to numbers back up!
Old queen 2013 queen brought aug last year is upto 5 frames of brood already and bees have backfilled all other frames with OSR, will be supering tomorrow as i'm extracting tomorrow (not enough equipment to super today).
With the old colony I choose the best queencell I thought and removed the rest a week later from the AS. Last weekend I checked and it had emerged although couldn't find her which was about the 8 days mark from capping. I've put clearer boards on this colony this morning to take 3 OSR supers off but was going to leave this alone till next weekend apart from the extraction tomorrow.
I'm also tempted to put in a test frame to confirm this next week so I can make sure I have a backup plan because of the time it takes to raise a new queen.
My question is when do I reunite with the original bees, effective am I right in thinking ideally after 2 full brood cycles (so early/mid july assuming the queen gets mated). Basically I want a summer honey crop and in order to get my best chance at this I need to numbers back up!