So I went through the hives again today. I removed some brood and combined it with the frames in my nucs. Hopefully I have made some space for the bees in my hives. Will it work? I don't know yet!
The upshot is that I now have two small hives on my porch, each with some 8 or 9 frames of brood and stores. These will get moved to their new locations on Tuesday if all goes to plan. But the weather is proving to be totaly disruptive. Storms and heavy rain all weekend, plus no end in sight this coming week. So bees cooped up inside, not doing anything other than thinking about swarming. They're like small children - I just have to get them to think of something else!!!
Just to compound the issues and add salt into the wounds, during all of this I found a queen cell in one of my nucs!! The new queen was there as well! What are the bees doing to me? Did I upset them? I'm now really confused! What will happen? I suspect I'll just have to wait and see. If my new 'nucs' swarm, what can I do? My objective is to build them up for next winter. So as long as I can do this I reckon we'll be OK. If they swarm I guess I'll need to get a new queen!
If my own hives at home swarm, that may be a different kettle of fish. I need to sleep on this and ask around for some advice. The Demaree method seems worthy of some reading up on. Maybe if I can get hold of a couple more queen excluders I can make sure both don't swarm!
Ugggghhh!!!!
I wouldn't be surprised if this spring sets some new rain fall records.
ReplyDeleteRight in the middle of swarm season, comes 1-2 weeks of non-stop rain (as if swarm season by itself wasn't difficult enough).
Maybe with all the rain, we'll have an over abundance of nectar, and large honey crops!