Just last week I discovered another queenless hive. The bees had been busy filling the two honey supers and I neglected my duty to do a periodic hive inspection. Too slowly I recognized they had stopped filling the supers. A little investigation quickly revealed the hive to be queenless. If I had conducted the periodic inspections as I had originally planned in the spring I would have noted the queenless condition up to a month ago.
So do to my neglect I have lost the possibility of getting a honey crop from this hive. Hopefully by re-queening it now the hive will be able to strengthen itself enough to be ready for winter.
So after mentally kicking myself I have resolved that on July 1st I will inspect all of my hives. I will use this opportunity to verify that there is eggs and larvae in each hives. I will also at this time do a midsummer treatment for mites. Yes, it is a lot of work destacking and restacking a hive but the effort is worth it.
Current recommendations are to do a midsummer mite knockdown just before the bees begin raising the winter bees. This will reduce the mites and associated mite born viruses thus resulting in healthier winter bees. A mite treatment is also recommended after the honey harvest in August/September.
If you are planning on re-queening prior to winter now is a good time to locate a queen supplier and getting your queens on order.
Good reminder! I was out harvesting capped honey frames and a couple of hives seemed a little weak so I went into the deeps. All were queenright except one.
ReplyDeleteI had removed a few frames of capped honey from this hive a week ago and several frames were 80% capped at the time. Today they hadn't improved and there didn't seem to be as many bees around so I went looking. There were only a couple of dozen capped worker cells and all of the cells in the rest of the brood chamber were clean. Very clean. No eggs, no brood, nothing. I was able to procure a queen and she is currently in the hive, in her cage. The bees showed no hostility when I placed her in between frames in the lower deep, and a number of bees came up to her as if to pick up some pheromone or feed her. But they didn't sting or ball her.......then.
If I would have checked a week ago a new queen would already be laying. As it is I lost at least a week of bee production which results in a loss of honey production. But there's still time for them to recover. I'm glad I caught it today.