I wintered over 4 hives successfully. I split two of them to make nucs for my brother that wants to start in bees. I put feeders on all of them to help out I thought, but didn?t realize how much natural pollen and nectar they were bringing in. Two of the bigger hives packed themselves in and started swarm cells like crazy.
My attempt at a solution.
I took the frame from the queenless hives that had the most developed queen cells and popped them in the two 10 frame hives and wiped out most of the swarm cells. I took the queens out and dropped them right in the top of the queenless nucs. I did one yesterday and one today. The one from yesterday has lots of eggs in it today, and the queen was laying eggs in today?s swap within minutes of being dropped on top of the frames.
Theory is the swarmy hives go queenless and some cells open up in the next couple weeks till she emerges and returns from mating, and the nucs draw a second box of comb and grow.
Here is today?s queen about 5 minutes in. I watched her lay 4-5 eggs.
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Topic: Queen swap and queen less hives. (Read 1129 times)