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Author Topic: Help really required please  (Read 2156 times)

Offline ronb

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Help really required please
« on: December 08, 2017, 10:56:59 pm »
Hello I have kept bees for 6 years now and in sessions gone by I have done extremely well with a genuine surprise on how much honey one hive could produce. Last year had honey production drop to next to nothing so at the beginning of October I purchased a new queen and took the 1 year old queen (if it is still her) and started a new hive so I have 2 hives now. Would have hoped by now that the new queen would have settled in and I would be getting some honey took of the top super and received to medium jars of honey  just a fraction of what I would have got a couple of years ago.
Some facts:
Running 2 hives now with a brewed box .queen excluder and 1 super on top with 10 frames
Bees do not what anything to do with the supers
Not drawing out ant frames in the supers
Brewed box weighs a ton I lift the end of the hive and think oh yeh time to get some honey but find that all the weight is in the brewed box
Beginning of October did a spring clean and set/placed some fresh frames on both brewed boxes 

Have only had just enough honey to keep up with the family needs would like to get back to when I would do my back in in just a couple of weeks lifting (struggling) the super off onto the clearing board. Both hives very busy lots of take offs and landings
Would love to hear from anyone with any suggestions what maybe going on
Thanks for your time Ron
ronb28@hotmail.com
« Last Edit: December 08, 2017, 11:09:53 pm by ronb »

Offline eltalia

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Re: Help really required please
« Reply #1 on: December 09, 2017, 02:06:52 am »
The caveat to my advice Ron is it all depends on where in Perth your
"hives" are located. Given the past history(?) look around, ask around, and
determine you are getting typical midsummer flowering happening. Some areas - allover Aussie
 are way out of sync these past three seasons - may actually be in dearth right now.
As one way forward(?) determine first of all both queens are in fact laying, if only a few score plus
 ten eggs a day. Next, take your old queen in the new colony and reduce the structure back to just
6 frames of drawn comb
and a little honey - where a honey band exists across the top of the brood frame, that is plenty enough.
Put a plug in to fill, the void in that broodbox- a made block of polyfoam is good, a divider board would
 work also.
For your new queen in the original colony?
Take frames #1:2:3 and frames #8:9 out and place those above the excluder. If there is brood in any of
 them make sure you don't move the queen with them, and in a weeks time check them for queen cells
 and remove same if found. In that brood box make every alternate frame around
positions #4:5:6:7 an empty drawn comb moving the existing frames out towards positions # 1:2 and #8:9.
Your post reads as classic "honey bound" with backfilling of the nesting
zone/area/core being used for honey/pollen stores and so denying space
for any queen to lay in. The above manouvre is one method to give the bees a message this behavior simply
isn't good enough.. heh
As an after thought or maybe a "nice to have", it may pay to remove frames with more than say a 20 count
of drone brood from the colonys all together. It may be inconsequential for your local situation, but
 honeybound and loads of drone comb is not the best of situations at this time of year, in Sandgroper
 country... cheers


Bill


Offline Acebird

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Re: Help really required please
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2017, 08:21:29 am »
I have no clue what your location is like but it is acting like the colony has decided to swarm or they are in the process of supercedure.  If you can determine which one my thoughts would be on a divide in half if the answer is swarm.
You say you have two hives now.  What is the other one doing?  It might indicate dearth or not.
Brian Cardinal
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Offline little john

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Re: Help really required please
« Reply #3 on: December 09, 2017, 09:58:29 am »
Ron - I know nothing about conditions 'down-under' (hope you guys don't get too pi$$ed-off with poms using this expression), so I won't even begin to speculate - I'm only writing this to advise you to remove your email address from the first post, else you may find yourself inundated with offers of marriage from fictitious Russian brides, or millions of dollars of unwanted currency from Nigeria !   You can always be contacted here via the PM system.

All the best, and good luck,
LJ
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Offline iddee

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Re: Help really required please
« Reply #4 on: December 09, 2017, 10:41:36 am »
I, as the others, don't know your locality, but a common problem anywhere is as follows.  Bees are reluctant to go through an excluder into new territory. If you add a super over an excluder, it is best to either have drawn comb in it, move a few frames with bees up, or leave the excluder off until they start using the super. Again, this may not be your situation, but just something to consider.
"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me . . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be"

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Offline eltalia

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Re: Help really required please
« Reply #5 on: December 10, 2017, 06:48:09 am »
I, as the others, don't know your locality, but a common problem anywhere is as follows.  Bees are reluctant to go through an excluder into new territory. If you add a super over an excluder, it is best to either have drawn comb in it, move a few frames with bees up, or leave the excluder off until they start using the super. Again, this may not be your situation, but just something to consider.

"Respects" ol' fella, 'cos whilst there does exist a cojoined 'agreement'
on  "bee" management I have read (n' YoohooTubed) enough of both our
teachings to know we are poles apart on bee culture - example being QX usage.
In my view, whilst your advice here follows mine it still reflects little
to no clue on QX management over a single brood box. No surprise there as the
stone tablet for below the Mason Dixon line reads as "double box brood".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mason?Dixon_line
I post to make the point that QX mantra in bee culture is very likely as wrong as
 it is in anything else?
This, as - environment aside -in the extremes of your own backyard to that of your
 Kanuck cousins in tne Alaskan extremes and maybe persistent 'Keeps colonies in
 Greenland, QX use is both mandatory and progressive in colony management... no?

Bill

Offline iddee

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Re: Help really required please
« Reply #6 on: December 10, 2017, 07:09:32 am »
Since it is easily possible for a queen to lay in as many cells as there is in 10 deep Langstroth frames within less than 21 days, I contend it is impossible to give her all the room she needs in a single deep box.

As for mandatory, it is never mandatory to use a QX Bees have lived in the wild, and kept in skeps and hollow logs for thousands of years without them, so where do you get that they are mandatory? QX on a single deep will definitely cut down he queen's rate of laying when the build up is needed most.
"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me . . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be"

*Shel Silverstein*

Offline BeeMaster2

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Re: Help really required please
« Reply #7 on: December 10, 2017, 08:14:35 am »
I agree with Iddee. I started a flow hive this year. It only has 2 medium boxes and then the flow hive super. Every time they got to the point that they would start filling the super they would swarm. The flow hive acts like a queen excluder because the cells are too deep. Add another brood box and see what happens.
I read once on this forum that geeks in OZ cannot sell honey that came from frames that previously had brood in them.
Is that still the case. If so that would be a good answer as to why you require QE.
If you told our commercial beekeepers that they could not use brood comb for honey they would laugh.
Jim
Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
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Offline Troutdog

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Re: Help really required please
« Reply #8 on: December 10, 2017, 02:57:06 pm »
Since it is easily possible for a queen to lay in as many cells as there is in 10 deep Langstroth frames within less than 21 days, I contend it is impossible to give her all the room she needs in a single deep box.

As for mandatory, it is never mandatory to use a QX Bees have lived in the wild, and kept in skeps and hollow logs for thousands of years without them, so where do you get that they are mandatory? QX on a single deep will definitely cut down he queen's rate of laying when the build up is needed most.
Let's See
3200 cells per side
6400 per frame
10f 64000 cell ? 21 = 3,050
Odds are even if half brood box is full of stuff she would not reach ovipositioning.

Now that said, your possibly quite correct. Lol just wanted to do the math fir myself and see

Cheers
Tom

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Offline little john

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Re: Help really required please
« Reply #9 on: December 10, 2017, 04:33:58 pm »
There are other variables that are not being taken into account here:  strength of the individual colony; age and fecundity of it's queen; amount of pollen coming into the hive; nectar, likewise; and of the course the sub-species of bee concerned.

In Scotland, people keeping the British/German Black Bee never get to fill more than one brood box.  In Southern England those keeping Carnies or Italians easily fill a brood and a half.  When these are mongrelised, maybe 2 broods.

And - all it takes is a supersedure in mid-season and the brood numbers will fall accordingly.  It's not simply a case of running the potential numbers.
LJ
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Offline iddee

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Re: Help really required please
« Reply #10 on: December 10, 2017, 04:43:45 pm »
OK, my mistake. I was thinking 3000 per frame. Should be 3000 per side. That still leaves only 1/3 of the box for pollen, honey, bad comb, ETC. 2000 eggs X 21 days equals 42,000. Some say she can lay more. That's 2/3 of the capacity. Still too close for me to hem her in that tightly.
"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me . . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be"

*Shel Silverstein*

Online Michael Bush

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Re: Help really required please
« Reply #11 on: December 11, 2017, 04:08:04 pm »
"As the queen is capable of adapting the sex of the eggs to the cells, so she is also able to adapt the number of eggs to the requirements of the stock, and to circumstances in general. When a colony is weak and the weather cool and unfavourable she only lays a few hundred eggs daily; but in populous colonies, and when pasture is plentiful, she deposits thousands. Under favourable circumstances a fertile queen lays as many as 3000 eggs a-day; of which any one may convince himself by simply putting a swarm into a hive with empty combs, or inserting empty combs in the brood-nest of a stock, and counting the eggs in the cells some days after."--Jan Dzierzon, Rational Bee-Keeping, 1882 English edition, Pg 18

"We occasionally read in books on bees, or works on natural history, that the queen in her lifetime lays about 60,000 eggs. Such a statement is simply ridiculous; 600,000 to 1,000,000 would be somewhat nearer the truth; for most queens, in spacious hives and in a favourable season, lay 60,000 eggs in a month. The queen, as a rule, commences laying eggs in February, and continues until September, though not always at the same rate. An especially fertile queen in the four years, which on an average she lives, may thus lay over 1,000,000 eggs. The Author once had a queen fully five years old, which was still remarkably vigorous, and might have lived for another year or two if she had not been destroyed. It is, therefore, quite credible that the age of the queen occasionally extends to seven years, as we are assured by some bee-keepers who have made this observation; yet when we are told that in exceptional cases queens have continued alive for eleven to twelve years, the assertion probably rests on a delusion, or such a case is as rare as that of a man attaining the age of one hundred years or more. There is certainly a great difference among queens as regards fertility; the best mothers are those that lay a great number of eggs and deposit them in the cells regularly, neither laying two eggs in one cell nor missing a cell. With such a queen in the hive the brood is nicely arranged, and much of it hatches simultaneously, thus making it easy for the queen to repeat the operation of depositing eggs when the cells have been emptied. When such is the case the stock will be thriving, its well-being depending chiefly on the queen, who, as it were, is the soul of the hive."--Jan Dzierzon, Rational Bee-Keeping, 1882 English edition, Pg 18

"Queen Excluders... are very useful in queen rearing, and in uniting colonies; but for the purpose they are generally used, viz., for confining the queen to the lower hive through the honey season, I have no hesitation in condemning them. As I have gone into this question fully on a previous occasion, I will quote my remarks:--
"The most important point to observe during the honey season in working to secure a maximum crop of honey is to keep down swarming, and the main factors to this end, as I have previously stated, are ample ventilation of the hives, and adequate working-room for the bees. When either or both these conditions are absent, swarming is bound to take place. The free ventilation of a hive containing a strong colony is not so easily secured in the height of the honey season, even under the best conditions, that we can afford to take liberties with it; and when the ventilating--space between the lower and upper boxes is more than half cut off by a queen-excluder, the interior becomes almost unbearable on hot days. The results under such circumstances are that a very large force of bees that should be out working are employed fanning-, both inside and out, and often a considerable part of the colony will be hanging outside the hive in enforced idleness until it is ready to swarm.
"Another evil caused by queen-excluders, and tending to the same end--swarming--is that during a brisk honey-flow the bees will not readily travel through them to deposit their loads of surplus honey in the supers, but do store large quantities in the breeding-combs, and thus block the breeding-space. This is bad enough at any time, but the evil is accentuated when it occurs in the latter part of the season. A good queen gets the credit of laying from two to three thousand eggs per day: supposing she is blocked for a few days, and loses the opportunity of laying, say, from fifteen hundred to two thousand eggs each day, the colony would quickly dwindle down, especially as the average life of the bee in the honey season is only about six weeks.
"For my part I care not where the queen lays--the more bees the more honey. If she lays in some of the super combs it can be readily rectified now and again by putting the brood below, and side combs of honey from the lower box above; some of the emerging brood also may be placed at the side of the upper box to give plenty of room below. I have seen excluders on in the latter part of the season, the queens idle for want of room, and very little brood in the hives, just at a time when it is of very great importance that there should be plenty of young bees emerging."--Isaac Hopkins, The Australasian Bee Manual

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesulbn.htm

A lot of the issue of the queen laying in supers is because of a lack of drone comb in the brood nest.  The bees don't want to have brood scattered all over, but the need to raise drones is a high priority and they will if they need to.  They can tear down comb that has no cocoons in it, and frequently that is the case in the supers, so they go there and make drone comb and the queen lays in it.  I ran several FlowHives for several years now.  I got the first one a year before they were on the market.  I've never used an excluder with them and never had an issue, but I think that is partly because of the drone comb in the rest of the colony.  Also the cells are too deep in the Flow frames and not the right diameter for either workers or drones.

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Offline eltalia

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Re: Help really required please
« Reply #12 on: January 16, 2018, 03:32:03 am »
Since it is easily possible for a queen to lay in as many cells as there is in 10 deep Langstroth frames within less than 21 days, I contend it is impossible to give her all the room she needs in a single deep box.

I read someone quotes numbers later in the thread. What that and your
statement overlook is what the bees are doing - will do - where you
manage growth/decline. The cells are there, formed, using a QX allows the
choice to backfill or store in super.... or both, sometimes.

Quote
As for mandatory, it is never mandatory to use a QX Bees have lived in the wild, and kept in skeps and hollow logs for thousands of years without them, so where do you get that they are mandatory? QX on a single deep will definitely cut down he queen's rate of laying when the build up is needed most.

Having kept colonies in skeps and hollow logs it is easy put to evidence
these are quite different environments to that of a managed colony.
As in your statement "definitely cut down" ... right there is where management
denys what bees might do in a buildup phase of their own selection. I was simply
saying there do exist those who manage whole apiaries around use of QX --
"mandatory" for their operation.

Bill

 

anything