Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => DOWN UNDER BEEKEEPING => Topic started by: Pet Bear on March 22, 2017, 02:21:03 am
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Gday men n women.
Was in my hives today for the first time in a month. With all the rain in the last 10 days or so should I be surprised that no eggs or larvae was seen. Seen capped brood and queen. So my question is dose the queen stop laying in very wet weather???
Thanks for your time
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Are they in swarm mode?
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Are they in swarm mode?
Australia is going into fall, isn't it? It would be like swarming in October here.
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That is not unheard of is it?
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Of course not, but the result is usually bad for both the parent hive and the swarm. Just saying the bees should be less likely to be in swarm mode with winter approaching.
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Wet weather probably means no stores entering the hive, so the queen might stop laying for that reason. Plus we don't know when they start preparing for winter there.
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I've seen my bees stop laying in the fall dearth [October, here]. It always freaks me out, but once I start feeding, they're fine.
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Wet weather probably means no stores entering the hive, so the queen might stop laying for that reason. Plus we don't know when they start preparing for winter there.
It is my understanding they don't have winter.
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I've seen my bees stop laying in the fall dearth [October, here]. It always freaks me out, but once I start feeding, they're fine.
Your queen stopped laying to get ready for winter. Larvae require large amounts of honey and pollen. By feeding them you are stimulating egg laying. Do you still have enough pollen coming in to support the new larvae or are they having to use the stored pollen that they will need for their spring build up?
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Pet Bear,
What are your temperatures like, is it about to get cold, are there any flowers to feed the bees. Your queen should stop egg production for winter if she is a good queen.
Jim
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Yes during extreme weather events like you have had up your way lately, I've had queens stop during the event and then start again. Makes for an interesting brood pattern. We had an extremely full on hail storm on Christmas day about 6 years ago over the Melbourne area. The hail even knocked over a few of my hives. You tube Christmas day hail storm in Melbourne and you'll see why the queens stopped. It would have been noisy inside the hive.
That was at the peak of our summer and most of the hives survived. I had to move them as there was barely a leaf left on the trees much less a flower.
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It is my understanding they don't have winter.
Location, location where the OP is they don't have much of a winter, bit further south where I am we average 60 night below freezing and can still be getting snow in mid spring.
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Does that happen in March? It is not just cooler temps it also has to do with dearth. When does the nectar give out where you are?
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I've actually got the best flow I've had all season going at the moment, we had night temps below 30F a month ago.
When I inspected a week ago I could see a reduction in brood area in most of them, it was only a couple of 5 frame nucs started early Feb that were still increasing.
With the amount of rain some areas have had I would say they are in a dearth as it would have washed out anything in bloom.
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220 - here too. No idea what is flowering. I checked all my hives in the last few days and some are really full of honey - one started to build into the lid - a good sign.
No drones to be seen - swarming is done here.
We don't get a " winter" like our southern parts can but we can get the odd frost in the valley. Winters are very mild here.
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max2 - I'm in the same boat as you, I don't know what they are bringing in. Still a little ground cover flowering dandelion, late thistles etc but no massive bloom to be seen. Have noticed the odd euc flowering could be it, everything east of my bees is native scrub for as far as they can fly so must be something out there flowering.
Interesting that the fruit harvest is running late around here this year, figs were all about 4 weeks behind normal and most of the apple varieties are 2 or more weeks later than usual.