Saturday, April 23, 2011

Swarm Preparations?

I'm not sure about this, but when I was in my hives this afternoon I may have removed a couple of active swarm cells.  One was open and full of milky white royal jelly, the other was closed and had a pupa in it.  It could have been a drone cell, but I don't think so.  Both cells were on the bottom of a frame so in prime position for a swarm cell!

There were plenty of queen cups too. But these were all empty and I've sort of got used to finding them.  I am more concerned about the possibility of queen cells as I do not want the hives to swarm!

So what do I do?  My initial thought is to make nucs from some of the brood frames in the hives, thus making some more space for the bees.  But I only did this a couple of weeks ago!  Quite aside from the fact I don't have any queens right now, can I do this again? I can't see why not.  One complication will be the fact that the two nucs I have currently contain bees - and will do so into next week.  I am going to prepare new hives from these, but I don't this until Tuesday.

There is some good news!  My 'Blue' hive has started to draw out honey comb on some of the plastic foundation in the deeps and on the pure beeswax foundation in the supers.  Maybe this will keep them busy and take their minds of swarming.  I can always cross my fingers.

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