Natural Beekeeping International Forum

[yellowbelly]

Hi,

This is my first hive. I'm using a standard National hive on a mesh floor and have found 8 well grown larvae in the floor slide in the last couple of days. In recent inspections there seemed to be areas of unused brood cells. I've got 3-4 ideas on this;

Wasp attack (but haven't seen any get inside hive, 10cm entrance block in use),
Hive too cold because I added a super,
Workers are continuing to throw out larvae after drone laying queen replaced,
Disease or pesticides (I've seen a couple of adult workers thrown out, nearly dead)

Doing inspection tomorrow and intend to remove super and add insulation under the roof.

Anything else I should check for or do?

Thanks . . . . Ben


Below a brief log of the hive history:

June 12th - Swarm installed, fed syrup, frames drawn out
July 6th - Drone laying queen replaced, drone brood removed (bees shaken off onto sheet, queen found and remaining bees led back into hive)
August 5th - Added super, 6-7 frames with brood patches, 3 frames untouched.
August 14th - 6-7 frames with brood patches, sealed brood and a few larvae, queen found. 1 frame of capped honey across all frames. Super untouched.

[Barbara]

Putting a super on a hive that was not thriving was definitely a bit too optimistic and we did have a few cool evenings a week back, so it may be that the brood got chilled.

Other than those things mentioned on your to do list, if you haven't already, then reduce the entrance and perhaps start to feed some 2:1 syrup. This swarm has lost time and bee power with not having a viable queen for so long and will struggle to bring in enough stores for winter as well as raise brood.
Good luck with them

Barbara

[yellowbelly]

Thanks Barbara,

Reporting back, super and queen excluder removed. Super untouched and brood frames still not drawn out. Using an empty super on top of crownboard as space for feeder with a layer of solid Kingspan insulation on top. I'm going to cover the 2 porter escape holes with either a feeder or a blanking plate otherwise I'll get condensation (?).

One more dead larva in tray today. I'll keep an eye on them.

Thanks again . . . . Ben