Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Sometimes I love it that the kids have the bees and sometimes I spend alot of time growling about it.... today I'm in between the two.

Jared's hive is much improved and more populated that what I thought it would be but still on the light side. He has a beautiful golden queen who seems fairly mellow and he is extremely excited over that.

Taeler's hive is the one we are worried most about now. No brood but drone brood and that's it. Lot's of honey though The kids have put their heads together and think that we should sort of make a split with Taeler's hive and join 1/2 of it with Jared's hive to boost his hive's population and give them a better chance before winter gets here. Then they want to take the other 1/2 and add a few frames of brood from Caleb's hive and see what kind of new queen Taeler gets. I thought it was awful late in the year to be making splits but the kids are convinced that they can do it and keep the bees alive through the winter. What do you all think?

Caleb's hive has a deep nearly half full of honey and drawn comb in the other half full of pollen and some honey. Caleb's hive also has two deeps full of brood!! He must have the layingest queen on the planet, she has just never slowed down a bit! I don't think it's going to hurt his hive at all if we take a few frames of brood out .... it might make the rest of his bees try to kill us but we're kind of getting used to that

What an adventure this has been! Does it ever get any easier?

I may do that with one frame, containing eggs, without bees, but I would not do that 1/2 thing. It just may cause you to lose two hives, or even three, if the bees you move kill Jared's queen.

Taeler said something about putting a newspaper between the bees from her hive and the ones from Jared's to combine them. Would that work as long as we made sure that Taeler's bees to be combined were for sure queenless? I have no problem NOT doing the split the kids are suggesting, to me it sounds like more risks than they need to be taking right now.

Otherwise, Caleb is happy to donate another frame of brood.

They are your bees. I just gave my opinion.

It is not too late to make splits. In fact it is an excellent time to make splits since the colonies are overpopulated from building up for the Spring honey flow.
With that said, I do not necessarily recommend it. Does Taeler have a queen? If not then you need one. Wally's recommendation for eggs is a good way to start. On the other hand, if you do not have a queen then you have a drone layer. Look inside the cells where you see eggs. Are there multiple eggs and are the eggs not in the bottom but perhaps stuck to the side? If so then one way of correcting this would be to introduce a queen to a nuc and then the nuc to the hive. Drone layers ared difficult to eliminate. Usually there are more than one of them.
Be careful not to jeopardize the other hives. Why hurt all of them if only one is ailing?

Kurt

Wally had a Queen for sale for $10, that might help.

Yes, I do, except it is 20.00 or more in gas for them to drive up here, plus

If it is a laying worker hive, they will be much more apt to raise a queen than except an adult one.

Ooops, there I go agin!

Sorry for the late reply.... had a trip to the hospital slow me down a bit.

Just to be clear... The bees are not *my* bees but the kids and when problems with their bees come up I just do my best to try and gather as much information as possible to pass on to them. So far I think they've done pretty good with the bees but I posted this question because what the kids were suggesting sounded too risky to me. I'm glad that I wasn't as far out in left field in trying to be cautious as the kids made me sound. I like being able to post my questions here because then I can either correct my thinking when I'm trying to guide the kids or (as in this case) tell the kids that their idea just isn't wise and use you guys as back up

We haven't been back into the hives yet... I got too sick to help out with it and Troy hasn't been getting home until too late at night to help them. Hopefully we'll get out there in the next day or so and figure out if there is a queen or not in Taeler's hive. For now I have put my foot down about splitting that hive based on the reasoning given by both Wally and Kurt. (thanks for being such great back up!) Caleb thinks he would like to make a split with his hive so I told him if he raises the money for the equipment he can do what he wants.

Now the question is.... if there is not a queen and there are drone layers in this hive will the hive rear a new queen or not? and how in the world do we get rid of drone layers? I'm off to find all the information I can to read on this but sometimes I just wish the bees were like the kids and I could just give 'em a whack and a lecture and tell them to take a nap!

If you can get them to raise a queen from an egg, the laying workers will revert back to normal once they know they are or will be queen right.