Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Hive check March 16 2018



South  (Tracy's) Hive was looking pretty good today. Had nice food pattern in the upper chamber which I flippef to be the lower one so that it will now have all them emerge and let the queen move up into the upper chamber. I did see two queen cells being constructed in the lower box so I moved it to the upper box once I flip them. They were only about halfway built.

The West (Michelle's) have also had a decent brood pattern and it built out seven to eight of the frames I think there might have been a swarm cell in Michelle's box that was beginning to form next time I come out I will bring a nuc box. However, because the East nuc was low on brood, I did not see any larva or capped brood from what should be a new Queen, I moved a frame from Michelle's into that nuc

The Nuc seemed like there were quite a few bees but as I went through it I could not find a queen or eggs. It was cloudy today so perhaps I just couldn't spot any, but there wasn't any larvae either. The gnarly cell queen queen cell had hatched out so we'll see what happens.

My Blue Hive, the East hive had no brood and it to speak of. I'm concerned that the new Queen which I had heard pipping was damaged when everything fell over. If I don't see any brood next week I will take a frame from one of the other hives to encourage them to build a new Queen. All of the hive seem calm, that's why I'm thinking there are Queens, just not fully laying. Only time will tell.

Update 3/17/18
After having breakfast with The Beekeeper this morning and discussing Queens, it became imminently clear that those Queen cups needed to go into split mode. On the two hives that had Queen cups, I was able to find the queen in one but not in the other. Have split them out. Will not open the hives with the queen cups for at least 21 days probably longer in fact. Because the cells must build out, (day 4 egg starts becoming queen cup, capped at 9 days, emerging at 16 days)the queen must emerge (day 16) take her mating flight come back and start laying.. If  today is the 17th of March and the cups are 5 days old, , it will be at least  11 more days until she emerges (3/28) and if all is successful at least (6 days maturing + 4 days mating + 2 days sperm storage = 12 days) or 4/8  before she is laying well. I am feeding one to one sugar water and pollen patties made with sugar water pollen and some corn syrup. Suddenly I have six hives if they all make it! 3 nux 3 hives.

These notes are from honeybee suite blog:
Count the days before she lays

Looking at the math, we can see that if everything went as fast as possible, the queen could begin to lay as early as 8 days after emergence:

5 days maturing + 1 day mating + 2 days sperm storage = 8 days

But that almost never happens. More typical would be:

6 days maturing + 4 days mating + 2 days sperm storage = 12 days

But toss in a week of rain and it might look like this:

6 days maturing + 4 days mating + 7 days rain + 2 days sperm storage = 19 days

In fact, many people believe 2 to 3 weeks (14 to 21 days) is a good rough estimate of the hatch-to-lay timetable.

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