Started with high hopes and optimism, had watched the videos and read the books. I felt sure I knew what I needed to look for and what to do.. I bought two packages.
Yeah, so its not that easy..I had what I thought was a swarm cell in one of the packages, so I made a two frame split. Yesterday I just found a queen in it so the split is queen right.. Its been over a month.. the original package seems weak and I've added young brood and eggs to it. The other package seems strong, I added a super to it, and looking at a split any day now on it..
The son bought a nuc, about a week ago. we moved it in to a 8 frame hive. really from my inexperienced eye. It seemed to me, that someone pulled all the frames from boxes they didn't want anymore and sold them in a nuc with a few bees in it.. we are going to weed out the black frames as soon as the colony builds up some.
I was looking for a more yellow queen, the queen I found was black and looked more like a dirt dauber.
Post by pokeyjeeper on May 7, 2018 17:55:29 GMT -5
Cat after my queen went through the winter she was dark a lot of the new hybrid queens are black as far as the package you split with them having to make a new queen it takes 16 for a queen to hatch I think up to 20 days after that to get mated and then up two 2 weeks to get laying good so that hive is going to be weaker than the other one if you can keep boosting it with sealed brood from your strong hive and the black nuc frames are normal cull them out and save them for swarm traps great bait just put them where the wax moths will not get to them your doing fine keep them Fed until you put you supers on
Started with high hopes and optimism, had watched the videos and read the books. I felt sure I knew what I needed to look for and what to do.. I bought two packages.
Yeah, so its not that easy..I had what I thought was a swarm cell in one of the packages, so I made a two frame split. Yesterday I just found a queen in it so the split is queen right.. Its been over a month.. the original package seems weak and I've added young brood and eggs to it. The other package seems strong, I added a super to it, and looking at a split any day now on it..
The son bought a nuc, about a week ago. we moved it in to a 8 frame hive. really from my inexperienced eye. It seemed to me, that someone pulled all the frames from boxes they didn't want anymore and sold them in a nuc with a few bees in it.. we are going to weed out the black frames as soon as the colony builds up some.
I was looking for a more yellow queen, the queen I found was black and looked more like a dirt dauber.
Well as least I'm learning.. Not stung yet..
Keep the high hopes and optimism!
Use some caution when you split. Your population is quickly reduced when you split. I make sure my packages are exploding before I start splits. It's all about the numbers. Splitting to early makes for a struggle for both mother hive and split and can take a long time to recover, if ever. If you have to keep adding frames to keep your numbers up, it most likely means you split too early. Sounds like your two frame split is queen-rite. Keep watching for eggs to see how she is doing - if she mated and what kind of queen she is turning out to be.
Queen colors can sure vary. I have a real dark one now as well, and her offspring are darker also. Are you marking your queens? That is the best way to keep track of them.
Some folks love nucs, as in a good one, the queen is already producing. I've had good luck with packages and splits so don't do nucs. While you want to rotate out your old wax, I've found packages settle in nicely on old wax. I rotate it out to use in my swarm traps.
Glad you are learning. Enjoy the journey. (And I didn't know that you could be a beek and not get stung once or a few hundred times. The first one is the worst.)
I haven't marked any queens. I think things are going to be OK, your right BK I did split one hive to soon. I found a superseder cell and made the two frame split it was to early.. the queen failed in the first hive, so both hives were working on new queens. both seem to be about to recover.
The lesson I learned is, education is good.. but doesn't come close to experience.. Thanks for the help guys..