Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Hive check heavy with nectar but no real brood

I'm not sure I have a queen anymore.  I have a lot of bees right now, and a lot of honey and nectar.   In fact, the second deep was way too heavy for me to lift so I removed all but three frames from there to move it.  Then I decided to add a third deep since there was so little room in the second.  They haven't made much headway in the super I added but I also added that to the top.  Right now, I just wanted to give them room to grow....hoping there is a queen somewhere that I may have missed.

I saw very little brood, but did see some eggs on a few frames. I also saw some empty cells with black dot in them.   I wonder if they were mites.  I just fear that I could be drone heavy again.  I'm not sure.

But I did what I could for now as I'm heading to vacation and won't have time to deal with anything more than what I did today.  I checked all boxes and all frames today and cleaned out any comb not needed.

When I get back in a week or so, I plan to do a mite check and an oxalic acid treatment if needed then. I am not going to get a queen.  Seems to me the norm of the life of a queen should last more than 2 months!


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