I have one very strong hive that has me stumped.
Last week, I moved 5 of my hives into my back yard for the winter- they are low on stores and I'm going to have to feed them to get them thru the winter. This week, our weather here in Detroit Michigan has been unseasonably warm- reaching the mid 50's and 60's so the bees have been our flying, gathering pollen, and being busy in general.
All except one very large, three story hive, that I knew had a lot of empty comb in it- the large population had eaten up much of their winter stores. I decided to see what was going on in there yesterday, and see if I could condense them down into two hive bodies. When I got inside the middle box tho, i found two frames with hand sized patches of sealed brood, about 6 ripe queen cells, (supercedure cells, in the middle of the brood patches.) one open queen cell, with the cap hanging from one edge of the lip, but the side torn open where the bees had begun to tear it down, and one unmarked queen,
She was not the marked New World Carniolan queen that was put in this spring, but she didn't run around madly like the virgin queens I have seen before- She wasn't dinky, but she didn't look big enough to be doing much laying either. I don't know if she is mated, or the freshly hatched virgin who's cell I spotted. I did not spot my Marked queen, or anyother queen.
Well, so I figure I have this <Very> strong hive here that seems to be trying to requeen itself in November. We may get a few more days in the 50's or 60's but it's not very likely. I did spot a few drones in this hive, but not very many- I doubt that a virgin queen will have a sucessful maing flight at this time of year. (We have snow flurries predicted for tuesday, and temperatures in the low 40's predicted for the rest of the week.)
So what do I do?
I have four other hiveshere- should I combine these bees with one or more of the queenright hives? What will having a virgin queen in a wintering cluster do to a queenright hive- will the virgin kill the reigning queen? Should I shake them into other hives, but force them to go thru a queen excluder to try to keep the virgins from joining the cluster?
If I chance it, and give this hive a chance to go it on their own, and the mating fails, will they all become drone layers over the winter? This is a <very> populous hive, with the cluster filling the center 5 frames of two brood boxes. I hate to lose all those bees. Still, I'd hate it worse if I combined them with other hives, had small virgins get thru the excluder and kill my good queens, and ended up with several messed up hives.
I have plenty of extra equipment- bodies, excluders, etc. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know! Monday is probably the last chance I'll get to do any serious manipulations.
Ellen in Michigan
---------------------------------
Do You Yahoo!?
Find the one for you at Yahoo! Personals.
|
