A Simple Method of Making Increase : 27 Tasks for May
• If you haven’t made a detailed inspection already, check for disease.
• Mark the queen, if you missed doing this at the last inspection. Most manipulations are easier when you can find her quickly.
• Make sure you have enough spare equipment to perform swarm
can be tricky to do without damaging the queen cell. It may take some practice to perfect this technique so don’t worry if you mess it up at fi rst. The queenless bees that have been shut up in the mini-nuc will readily accept the queen cell.
Queen Fights
It is important with this method of making increase that the bees choose their own queen. The bees really do know which is best and the strongest queen is the winner. As these are emergency queen cells and not made under the swarming impulse, the bees will not go off in a swarm. The fi rst queen to hatch out will start piping to fi nd out where the other queens are in the hive. Piping is a high-pitched sound and comes out as a series of beeps. Queens can even make this sound while they are still within the queen cell, so usually the fi rst queen to emerge will fi nd the other cells and sting the new queens to death through the walls. The worker bees will then tear the damaged queen cells down and it is interesting to see evidence of this, though sometimes they remove all the dead queen cells completely so there is nothing to see. Occasionally a number of queens will emerge all at the
May 2015 Vol 97 No 5
management or splits (as described above).
• Make sure you have enough clean supers for honey collection.
• If the weather is good and there is a nectar fl ow, put foundation in the supers for the bees to draw out.
• Continue to keep your hive records up to date.
same time and a fi ght to the death will ensue. I have been lucky enough to witness this once but it happened so quickly that I did not have time to fi lm it. Apparently the new queens emit a pheromone that attracts them to each other and stimulates them to be really aggressive to each other. The strongest one will grab the wing bases of the other with her mandibles (at this point they are facing each other). She will then curve her abdomen around so that she stings her rival just behind the head while holding on tightly to stop her moving. As the queen’s sting is curved and not barbed (like the workers) she can easily pull it out and survive to fi ght again, until she is the only queen left. This way they cannot both die!
Mating
The time it takes for the new queen to mate is variable and depends on the weather and other factors. The size of the nucleus box can play a part and the smaller the colony, the sooner they push their new queen out to mate. Usually she has at least a week or two to enjoy a teenage existence in the hive before going outside, but in a large hive with poor weather she may take four weeks or even longer.
Many beekeepers panic at this stage and think their colony is queenless. The virgin queen is smaller than a mated queen at fi rst and has a triangular-shaped abdomen, so she may be diffi cult to fi nd. If she is spotted do not mark her yet as she may get damaged and rejected by the other bees. They do not fully accept her as their queen until she is mated and laying well. After a few mating fl ights high in the sky with a number of drones, she returns and takes a couple of days while the drones’ sperm arranges itself in her spermatheca; this enlarges her abdomen so she looks bigger. If no eggs are found after four weeks from queen emergence then you should look for polished cells, as the workers line the brood cells with antibacterial propolis. If you still cannot fi nd the queen and there is no sign of eggs or larvae, then either get a stronger pair of glasses or admit that she may have been eaten by a bird on one of her maiden fl ights, though this is fairly rare! I always say to beginners that the queen is easy to fi nd if you look for her red/brown-coloured legs as all the other bees have black legs. It can be like looking for a needle in a haystack but the more frequently you inspect your colony, the easier it gets.
Other Less Successful Methods
There are other methods of making increase such as making an artifi cial swarm before any queen cells are seen (as described in last month’s article). However the nucleus or hive you make queenless may not have enough bees to produce good quality emergency queen cells. Another type of split involves using special boards (such as a
Snelgrove board) as a fl oor for the second unit above the main hive body, dividing the two and providing an upper entrance. The only advantage is that you save on space, with both sharing the same fl oor and roof. The disadvantage is that it is diffi cult to keep looking at what is going on in the lower box. Another problem is that on
very hot days, such as those experienced last summer, the bees in the box above can overheat and expire. Usually the bees are excellent at controlling the temperature within the hive but an inexperienced beekeeper, putting too many bees in the box above, can cause such a disaster. With supers above the lower box to prevent congestion, the mesh-covered hole in the special board (which facilitates amalgamation later) allows debris to fall into the honey below and this can be nasty if you are aiming for perfect cut comb honey. So, keep it simple and try to understand the reasons for following your preferred method. ♠ Any queries please e-mail me on
Dinah@dinahsweet.com Web:
sensiblebeekeeping.co.uk
Dinah is a long-standing British Beekeepers’ Association Master Beekeeper. She is a seasonal bee inspector, a job she enjoys even more than her previous occupation as a physiotherapy lecturer.
www.bee-craft.com
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