Spanner in the works! Another failed imported queen brings about an interesting situation. 2/6/24
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- Опубликовано: 5 июн 2024
- Hello everyone,
This video is a little different because it's of me dealing with a situation where the bees have decided to do the complete opposite of what I wanted.
I decided to focus on this specific situation as it shows how I deal with anomalies during my inspections. I know quite a lot of newbies can become panicked and then stress when things like this occur. The best thing to do is just stay calm.
If you need to have a think, then just replace the roof and go have a ponder. There are very few situations where you have to act urgently, so it's good to make sure you can collect your thoughts before acting.
Another point is that if things go wrong, it really doesn't matter. Generally, you can fix almost all problems with a colony when everything has settled down. So just take a deep breath and try to do your best to set yourself up for the best results. There's no need to beat yourself up because everyone makes mistakes, and it's just how you learn for next time.
Please enjoy the video, and if you want to see more content like this, then think about liking and subscribing to my channel.
Hope you're all safe and well,
Greg
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Some good news on the back of your tough streak! I bought one of those bee pipes that you use. ITS AWESOME. Caught the queen and marked her today. For a few seconds I felt like not a complete novice!!!
Well done!
I'm going to start selling them, I think. They're super useful when you don't want to squash your queen.
Great video, what a time to see the queen hatch out (with some assistance) I've just secured a little piece of land from a local farmer to start my beekeeping journey. I only want 2-4 hives, i see you've got a lot of Abelo equipment which is my chosen brand of hove too. My biggest dilemma is that I'm really wanting to go with Langstroth but it appears National is the UK's favourite but constantly having to double brood or brood and a half due to not having enough space. If you were starting out again what would you use? (You've got yourself a new subscriber.)
Thank you for your kind words. I really appreciate it.
If I could go back to the start, then I'd go with langstroth. The kit is so much easier to build and cheaper to buy. Plus, the bees prefer it, I think.
I've not bought abelo hives since my second year of beekeeping when prices skyrocketed after brexit, sadly. It's definitely the best equipment you can get in my opinion but it costs too much for a semi commercial operation like mine.
I hope you continue to enjoy my content🫡
I would watch an hour n half.
Can you get your sueens from UK?
Haha, thank you, I do two videos every Thursday. One over 2hrs long in many cases🤦♂️ and a 20ish min one focused on something that happened.
I can get my queens from the uk and usually do. I decided to get them from abroad because Mediterranean countries start their queen rearing earlier than us. It was a gambit to get bigger colonies earlier, and unfortunately, it failed, leaving me with the opposite.
Struggling to get my head around this.
A new mated queen was added but you now have hatched queen cells in there too?
That would suggest the original queen swarmed over a week ago.
When did you last inspect them?
Must be nearly 3 weeks ago surely for there to be mature and hatched queen cells.
Also shaking and turning frames multiple times is extremely dangerous to unhatched queens, you can easily damage their wings.
The queen cell you kept had the frame shaken twice, if you shake the frame remove all the cells on it and keep one from a frame you haven’t shaken
Hello,
Yes, it is a tad confusing, sorry. I don't script anything, so this is me dealing with situations as they come up. That means I'm not always clear.
So the queen in the nuc was an imported queen. I've been having a nightmare with a bunch of imported queens I bought where they've been released and then superseded as soon as they laid up a frame with eggs. Unfortunately, that seems to be the case here, too, as the colony size hasn't reduced
I inspect my colonies weekly, but when the colony is small, I usually don't shake the frames off as I'm not really expecting swarm cells. I also don't look for the queen as long as there are eggs present for the most part. My failure was that I didn't inspect this nuc close enough daftly.
It only takes 14 days from egg for Queens to emerge. In the video, you'll see that, for the most part, they were all still in the larval stage. I pulled one off that was on the cusp of being ready. Probably 10-12 days old. The 3 I used were probably only just 14 days old, meaning i probab only missed the 3 cells, which is easily done in a packed box.
I agree about the shaking and turning of the frames. The queens I graft myself I don't flip or anything. As far as I'm concerned, the queens I have put in these hives and nuc are placeholders until my grafted queens are ready. So I'm not hugely fussed with them being pristine as they will be replaced next month. It's a bit brutal, but I like to know what calibre my queens are. Hope that makes sense?
@@MystTreeHoney
I’ve had colonies try to supercede an introduced queen before but I just knock down the cells and they usually give up.
Once the new queen has a couple of rounds of brood through they accept her.
Just feel it would be worth a good weekly inspection on every hive during swarm season especially if I was buying in queens at £40 a time.
I completely agree 👍