David Eyre wrote:
>Classic! Obviously the swarm queen wasn't up to snuff, so the bees were in
>the process of superscedure, as you must have had two queens in that hive.
> Question? Which one did you pinch?
>When a queen is not working properly it is vital that the hive is
>watched carefully to establish the problem before jumping in to requeen.
>Often a superscedure queen is better than a bought queen, as all the hives
>effort is going into just one cell.
> As some one else wrote, it is better to make a small nuc for queen
>introduction. After waiting for her brood to start emerging, then unite
>with newspaper.
Actually, by the time my new queen arrived, the old one appeared to not
be laying anymore. There were no supersedure cells in the hive. The
bees just looked horrible. You could tell things weren't right. I
hoped the new queen could turn it around but it was probably too late.
I have been told that a 70% success rate in requeening is pretty good.
If so, then I have been lucky in the past and just need to chalk this
one up. Perhaps things would have been better if I used some bees from
a neighboring hive, introduced the queen with them and then united with
newspaper. Maybe, if I hadn't put a nail hole through the candy and
the introduction time was longer. Maybe, if I killed the old queen and
waited a day before introduction. I'll never know as I have burned the
hive and tried to forget about it. I'd rather be out a hive than risk
infecting more bees with something contagious. I never determined what
was wrong, but by getting rid of a bad hive I purged the risk it may
have presented to the rest of my apiary.
Later this year, I plan to do some requeening as I have some severely
cross tempered hives. I plan to use the newspaper trick next time.
BTW, David, I read the announcement about your representing E.H.Thorne
on these shores in Bee Culture. Congratulations. I would also like
some information about your four frame observation hive.
Ted Wout, 3rd year beekeeper, 8 hives, adding 4 this spring
Red Oak, TX
|
