Picking up nucs tonight

[JDavis]

Hey Folks,

I am picking up two nucs from Tates tonight. One is a Wayne's, the other an italian. (Was hoping for two Wayne's).

The first question, How late in the morning should I wait before putting them in hives tomorrow?

The second questions, anyone got time to help? I think I understand what it takes, but it would be nice to have the moral support, if nothing else.

Thanks!

[Jacobs]

I'm willing to help. Call me at 336 740-1703 and pm me with your address if you want. The weather does not look good for tomorrow (rain) but we sometimes have to work with what we have.

[Wally]

After looking at the forecast, I think I would sit them on the stand where they will be permanently, open the entrance, and let them fly until the weather improves. If they are in cardboard boxes, I would cover with plastic bags to keep the rain out.

[JDavis]

I put up a tarp over the nucs, and opened them up. Something that was curious to me is that one of the carboard nuc boxes had a screened bottom, and the other didn't.

[Wally]

Looks good. If Rob can't make it, let me know and I'll come over.

[JDavis]

Rob came over yesterday in the early afternoon and we got the bees into the hives. Having Rob there was a great help. He had to keep me on task, because of the weather. I wanted to look at the bees, and examine everything, but with the cool temperatures and a little wind, we had to move fast. Thanks again Rob!

Rob has obviously seen more hives than I have, so I welcome his input to what I saw. I trust his experience over my inexperienced observations.

The two hives couldn't be any more different.

Starting backwards...The second hive (italians) has a very prolific queen. The frames had a huge amount of capped brood, and I will soon see a population explosion. I think I will need to be careful to stay ahead of this queen. There wasn't much honey, but some pollen. We placed a feeder on the hive with 1:1 and HBH. A couple of minutes later, I saw syrup running out of the entrance. We checked, and sure enough, the feeder had a leak. We stole the feeder from hive one, because this hive needed it more. An hour after Rob left, the bees were bringing in bright yellow pollen, and there was constant activity.

The first hive (Wayne's) was almost the exact opposite. I would guess that there were 2 frames total of capped honey, and another frame of nectar. Again, I don't have much experience estimating these things, and we were moving quickly, so I welcome any corrections that Rob has to my observations. There wasn't as much brood as I was expecting, and I am concerned that they may be nearly honey bound.

The other concern that I have in regard to this hive is that I've only seen 3-4 foragers total yesterday or this morning. I think there are two possible causes. First, if the nuc was closed up during the middle of the day, the foragers were all out gathering. The problem should resolve itself in the next few days as bees age into the role, right? My bigger concern is this nuc might have swarmed in the last few days. We didn't take time to find the queen because of the weather, so I guess time will tell. The bees did fan on the landing board after we placed them, so I am hoping that means the queen is healthy.

There are plenty of active bees in the hive, and they have a lot of honey stores, (not sure about the amount of pollen they had...Rob?) so I don't think a forager shortage will hurt them long term, as long as I have a healthy queen.

Is there a possibility that I am not considering here? Maybe they like warmer temps?

[JDavis]

OK, got my answer today. Hive number one had foragers. They started later, and stopped earlier than hive number two, and only about half of the number. At the time of writing, almost no bees are flying to/from hive one, but hive two is still bringing in pollen and nectar.

I checked on the level of syrup, and was surprised that hive 2 had consumed the better part of a gallon of syrup. I added more, only to get a leak in the second feeder. Needless to say, I will be calling Brushy in the morning.

Next question. At what point do I need to think about removing the entrance reducer? On hive number two, it seemed like I had a traffic jam with lots of bees hovering a long time before being able to land. I placed the entrance reducer originally with the largest hole open, so my next step would be to remove it.

[Wally]

You can cut a block of wood half the length of the entrance. No need to use a store bought reducer. The entrance doesn't have to be in the middle.

All mine are wide open.

[Jacobs]

You can do a more careful examination of both nucs now that it is going to be mostly sunny with temperatures above 60°F. The nuc of Italians had brood on every frame and needed the sugar water much more that the Wayne's bees. The Wayne's had 2 frames of honey and lots of nectar in other areas, and far less brood. We wanted this nuc to consume stores during the cold period after installing them to give the queen more room to lay.

[JDavis]

I worked yesterday until 9:30pm, so today I decided to leave the office today before the weather changed. I used that time to take a closer look at my bees. I went into hive 2 first. The three new frames were about halfway drawn out. I started to worry about the queen as I worked my way across the frames because I couldn't find her. As I went, I did find where the bees were storing good amounts of pollen and nectar now, and am much less worried about them starving. Also, I noticed that they had taken very little of the syrup over the last two days, after using almost a gallon in a single day.

Finally, on the last newly drawn frame I found her and a bunch of eggs.

I'm including links to pictures, so that you can see things in higher resolution. It will be needed later...
Queen: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5uufzjbs2hdo0 ... .55.02.jpg

Eggs laid in new comb: https://www.dropbox.com/s/etigjb0q1nsyl ... .55.25.jpg

Overall, I am still very happy with this hive. I went ahead and added another hive body to give them more room to draw comb. It seems like the queen is simply waiting for space to lay now.

Now, for hive number 1...This hive worries me...
They are still collecting nectar, and I now have one frame of completely capped honey. I saw very little capped brood, and couldn't find any eggs. Then, on one frame, I found this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e4ue7q04atjnf ... .17.57.jpg
There were three total, and you can see that I accidentally crushed one of them as I was pushing the bees off of them for the picture. Yes, there is white jelly (royal jelly?) and larva. You can see it a little bit better here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6yj1n7jq8d31i ... .19.07.jpg
Am I wrong in thinking that these are supersedure cells?

[Jacobs]

They do look like either supercedure or emergency cells. Did you see any open brood on your examination? Were the bees noisy (roaring and fanning in the air from the top of the frames) when you opened this hive? Did the bees appear calm or runny?

[JDavis]

I saw a few open brood on one frame. There were developed to the same extent that the larva in the queen cells were. I didn't see anything younger/smaller. They were fanning a lot. I would say they were not calm. I'm not sure how to describe them though. Nervous would be a good description, in comparison to the other hive.

[Jacobs]

You might want to call the Tates tomorrow. You can explain that we did not examine the frames in detail when we installed them because of the cool temperatures and the threat of rain and tell them what you found when you went into the nuc today.

[pholcomb]

Great pic of the eggs laid in new comb. Thanks.

Paul

[JDavis]

Heard back from Tate. They are going to fix it, but it might take a little bit of time. Janice asked me to add a frame of brood from the other hive. I understand the logic, and think it makes sense.

I almost wish these queen cells were on different frames. I have two nucs that I could split them into, and give them a chance to build from. That would also free up this hive for a package. I might be thinking above my experience level at this point though...

[JDavis]

OK, I went back into the hives today to get a frame of brood from the good hive to give to the suffering hive. Here is an example of the laying pattern of my italian queen: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ckyifj6t3tdla ... %20HDR.jpg
Not bad, eh?

I took the outer most frame that had a good combination of brood at various ages to put into the other hive. (not the frame pictured)

While I was in the other hive, I found a queen. So yes, it does have a queen:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1e3t2iosf7518 ... .34.30.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ml8jpziq0qlmk ... .39.51.jpg

I spent my time checking every bit of open cells that I could see, and did finally find a few eggs.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3k0leqq0ff4ig ... .41.48.jpg
I'm not exaggerating when I say that these are the only eggs that I was able to find. There had to be at least a full frame and a half of open cells at this point, without anything in it. I watched her walk around for a couple of minutes, and despite walking all over open cells, she never backed into a single one.
I checked the queen cells as well, and they are still there. The cells have not been capped yet, so that means they are less than 8 days old, right?

So, guesses begin:
Crazy, inexperienced, beekeeper freaking out over nothing? (I think the queen cells rule this one at least partly out.)
Getting ready to swarm, and thinning her down so that she can fly; thus causing the drop in brood production?
New, post swarm, queen that just finished mating flights?
Poorly mated queen, and the bees are superseding?
Laying workers?
Zombees?

[Bsummitkeeper]

Those queen cells look old. Have you looked straight in them to see if there are actually larva or eggs in them? Is it possible that they are old queen cells that came with the nuc?

At this point you have a queen that's started laying and there are eggs for them to make an emergency queen if needed so your probably on the way. There may not be a lot of eggs but it looks like she's laying a tight pattern. I'd wait 5-7 days to check and she may be ramped up and laying like crazy.

I've made several nucs this year where I've used the old queen and left the healthy hive to make a new one and each time the old queen has taken several days to start laying again so it seems reasonable that a queen in a nuc that was relocated to an entire new location then moved into a new hive might take a few days to get comfortable and start laying.

[Jacobs]

It looks like she has just started laying. There is one cell in the upper left that has 2 eggs in it. They are well placed in the cell and are usually sign of a queen starting to lay rather than the multiple eggs/eggs on the sides of cells and on top of pollen typical of laying workers.

Again, I would call the Tates and let them know that all appears well and thank them for being prepared to stand behind their product.

[JDavis]

Those queen cells look old. Have you looked straight in them to see if there are actually larva or eggs in them? Is it possible that they are old queen cells that came with the nuc?

They have brood and royal jelly in them. I have seen that clearly now twice.

Rob, I will contact Tate's. How should I handle the queen cells?

[Jacobs]

My inclination would be to let them continue and check the hive in about a week. If the bees are happy with the current queen, they may not complete the process or the queen may take care of the "problem". If they are not happy with the queen, they may continue the supersedure process.

I'm dealing with a slightly different issue this way. Wally gave me a virgin queen last Friday. He had a swarm come out of one of his hives. He got the queen in a queen catcher clip. The bees returned to the hive, leaving the queen behind. I took her home and put her in a nuc with a couple of frames of bees from one of my hives. By Wednesday, the bee numbers had dwindled and the queen was still in the hive. I split one of my Brown Summit hives and brought home 3 frames of capped brood with nurse bees. One of these frames had 2 queen cells in the early stages of development. I put them in that nuc, and initially, the bees were not hostile to the queen. I am hoping the queen will get mated and begin laying, but I am also going to check on the queen cell status around next Wednesday.

Anyone else with a suggestion or an opinion?