Hive has no new brood, just honey. First time beekeeper. Help please

[Kate Hillenmeyer]

We had seen some queen cells or superceedure cells earlier this summer. I'm still not sure on the difference between all of them yet. We added a super to give them more room since it was so late in the season and we were trying to avoid a swarm. So after several weeks now, we keep checking the hive and now, they have started to draw comb out on the frames in the super but they have filled the brood with honey. I don't see any brood in the cells at all. Most of the queen cells (or whatever they were) are gone now. I have no clue what to do, I have a feeling our hive is queenless...Any advice?
Thanks!
Kate

[Paul Zelenski]

How long ago did you see the queen cells? Remember it takes a month or more for the new queen to be laying. Often drawing comb is a good sign. 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "madbees" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to madbees+u...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Kate Hillenmeyer]

It was mid July when we noticed the cells. They are drawing comb not very much. I keep thinking we should be putting a second super on it but every time we check its not ready yet.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to madbees+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "madbees" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/madbees/hwm0XbEqpwE/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to madbees+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Kate Hillenmeyer

[Greg V]

Experts will correct me, but - you should find somewhere a frame of eggs and/or very young open brood and stick into the intended brood area of the hive.
Bees should react appropriately.

Unless you have a fail-over process in place, unsure where to get the eggs (ask around?).
By "fail-over" I mean a second healthy colony on hand.
Just like in IT world, one with bees must have some "fail-over" process at all times.

On Tuesday, August 16, 2016 at 11:23:29 AM UTC-5, Kate Hillenmeyer wrote:

....... I have no clue what to do, I have a feeling our hive is queenless...Any advice?
Thanks!
Kate

[Kate Hillenmeyer]

So if I put a frame of fresh brood in my hive they will make a new queen and possibly be okay for winter?

We only have one hive so I dont have any available brood. Is there somewhere you can get some from?

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "madbees" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/madbees/hwm0XbEqpwE/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to madbees+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Kate Hillenmeyer

[Greg V]

In discussion next to this it was said - still time to grow a new queen this season.
So yes, if they need a queen, they will make one.
If not needed - they will not make one.

New brood? Ask here, I guess, to share/buy... Worth a try.

So a repeat lesson for myself and any new beek out there - never run only one hive.
Minimal number of hives to run - THREE.
Obviously, even two hives is better than one, but get it up to THREE asap.
If only have one hive - make at least 1-2 nucs out of it ASAP (for fail-over reasons like in this case).

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to madbees+u...@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Kate Hillenmeyer

[Kate Hillenmeyer]

Thanks! I will try asking around. I certainly wish more than one hive was recommended to me when I took the beekeeping class in February!

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to madbees+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Kate Hillenmeyer

[Greg V]

I think the "three hive rule" for the new beeks should be made, like, mandatory.
Unsure why the instructors are omitting this obvious fact.
Have to have the "fail-over" plans before you even start this (plan B and plan C, if you prefer).

[jeanne hansen]

In beekeeping, patience is a virtue.  When there are enough bees, and a nectar flow is on, the bees first fill EVERY cell in the brood nest with nectar.  THEN they draw out new comb for any further surplus.  Your bees sound perfectly happy.  They wouldn't do this if they were queenless.  Observe the entrance and see if any pollen is coming in at all.  If yes, they have a queen, and are expecting to have larva soon.

There is no reason to think your queen is missing.

It WOULD be an excellent time to give the hive a dusting with powdered sugar, since with no brood, all the mites will be phoretic,

 riding on bees. At such time, powdered sugar removes a significant percentage.

Put a white board underneath the hive before dusting, and look at it after 20 minutes.  It will give you an idea if you have few mites (50 on the board)or an overload (Too many to count on the board.).

Thanks!
Jeanne Hansen
824 Jacobson Ave
Madison, WI 53714
608-244-5094

---

From: Kate Hillenmeyer <khille...@gmail.com>
To: madbees <mad...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2016 11:23 AM
Subject: [madbees] Hive has no new brood, just honey. First time beekeeper. Help please

We had seen some queen cells or superceedure cells earlier this summer. I'm still not sure on the difference between all of them yet. We added a super to give them more room since it was so late in the season and we were trying to avoid a swarm. So after several weeks now, we keep checking the hive and now, they have started to draw comb out on the frames in the super but they have filled the brood with honey. I don't see any brood in the cells at all. Most of the queen cells (or whatever they were) are gone now. I have no clue what to do, I have a feeling our hive is queenless...Any advice?
Thanks!
Kate

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "madbees" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to madbees+u...@googlegroups.com.

[Kate Hillenmeyer]

I will do that. I always thought no brood meant no queen. I'm hoping she's still in there! Thanks for the advice. ANything from this point on I should keep an eye out for before winter?

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to madbees+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "madbees" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/madbees/hwm0XbEqpwE/unsubscribe.

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to madbees+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Kate Hillenmeyer

[jeanne hansen]

MITES!!!!

 

Thanks!
Jeanne Hansen
824 Jacobson Ave
Madison, WI 53714
608-244-5094

---

From: Kate Hillenmeyer <khille...@gmail.com>

To: mad...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2016 4:26 PM
Subject: Re: [madbees] Hive has no new brood, just honey. First time beekeeper. Help please

Kate Hillenmeyer

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "madbees" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to madbees+u...@googlegroups.com.

[Philip Parker]

Why don't all new beekeeper start with three hives instead of one? Because you already are shelling out several hundred dollars and shelling out 3 X (several hundred dollars) makes it become a very expensive hobby all of a sudden!

[Greg V]

Well, then you get what you pay for - a minimal setup with no redundancy and high risk built-in.
Then the Murphy's law kicks in.

[Tim Aure]

You don't need three hives but 2 have been recommended since I got bees 4-5 years now. Last winter I came across the thinking of an extra nuc which helped me with a hive that was ready to swarm in early June. I removed the queue and a couple of frames of brood into a nuc and let the Swarm cells in the big hive mature. It broke the swarm urge and the bees made s ton of honey during the time the brood was sealed and they had nothing to do. A 5 frame not is easy to build and give you the option of later recombining the better hive or letting it grow into its own full size hive or selling or giving it to someone interested in getting into this hobby we enjoy so much.

Heres a reprint of an earlier post-

Why every beekeeper should have a nuc

The term “nuc” is short for nucleus colony. A nucleus colony is just a very small colony of a few thousand bees and a queen.

Nuc boxes—the structures that hold a nucleus colony—come in all shapes and sizes. Usually you see five-frame deep boxes, but they also come designed to hold medium frames. The width varies too. I have seen two-, four-, five-, and seven-frame nucs, both single story and double story. One of my favorite nucs is a standard-size deep box with three dividers that gives you four two-frame sections, each with its own entrance. Or you can remove one or more of the dividers to make bigger sections. It all depends on what you want.

Reasons for maintaining a nuc:

• If one of your hives goes queenless, you have another queen ready to go. If you wait for your colony to re-queen itself, the population will drop such that you won’t get any surplus honey for that year.

• You can re-queen at times of the year when queens are unavailable to purchase.

• You can use the bees in a nuc to boost populations of a weak hive. If you don’t want to re-queen, you can just transfer some of the frames from your nuc into the weak hive.

In addition, having an empty nuc box on hand is useful for catching swarms or removing extra bees from an overcrowded colony.

So how do you raise queens in a nuc? The simplest way is to take a frame of brood with a swarm cell from a populous hive and put it in a nuc. The frame should have lots of nurse bees covering the brood to keep them warm. Put a frame of honey or an internal feeder next to the brood. Fill any extra space with drawn comb or empty frames, then close the lid, add an entrance reducer, and let the bees do their thing.

This works fairly quickly. You can do the same thing without a swarm cell if there are plenty of eggs or very young larvae on the brood frame. This takes a long time, however, and after a week or two you may not have enough nurse bees left to raise a good queen.

Here’s an example from my own apiary on how I use a nuc.

• Last spring I had one hive that built up early and looked like it was ready to swarm. I didn’t want it to swarm, so I took out four frames of brood. Each frame had at least one swarm cell on the bottom and lots of nurse bees covering the brood.

• I put each frame in a separate two-frame nuc and gave each one a frame of honey reserved from the year before.

• After about four weeks, I checked the nucs and found three had produced laying queens. I combined the queenless one with one of the others, so now I had three nucs.

• After a few more weeks I transferred the two-frame nucs into five-frame equipment so the colony would continue to expand.

• I kept entrance reducers in the small colonies to protect them from robbing bees and yellow jackets.

• At the end of the fall, I transferred each five-frame nuc into ten-frame equipment.

• I stacked the three nucs, one atop the other. I put the strongest on the bottom, and put double-screen boards between each nuc so the warm air from the largest colony would help to keep the smaller ones warm.

• In December, I found a dead queen on the landing board of one of my regular hives. Using a piece of newspaper, I combined one of the queenright nucs with the queenless hive. This left me with two nucs.

• As of today, the hive to which I added the queen and the remaining two nucs are all thriving.

• We still have a number of weeks to go, but if the two remaining nucs are not needed before the first honey flow, I will set each of them up as a separate hive.

As you can see, having a nuc available gives you many management options that you wouldn’t normally have. You can think of a good nuc as an insurance policy against the loss of a queen.

Rusty from my iPhone

On Aug 20, 2016, at 9:02 PM, Philip Parker <par...@uwplatt.edu> wrote:

Why don't all new beekeeper start with three hives instead of one?  Because you already are shelling out several hundred dollars and shelling out 3 X (several hundred dollars) makes it become a very expensive hobby all of a sudden!

[Jo Sommers]

We started with one hive three years ago - made it through the first winter, did a split and started the winter with two hives - had to requeen them.  One (the new split) died but the other made it, so this year (year three) we split again and now have two strong hives heading to this winter.  We started with Italians - the new queens last year were carniolans.  This time they have requeened themselves in June (the new split) and July (the older hive).  We have treated for mites, taken only a little honey and are feeding including honey bee healthy and nosema preventions.   So, three years on one package.  Two sets of boxes purchased in two different years.  This is a hobby for us, not a business and we are very happy to have the bees we have.  Don't want to spend the money or have the time commitment that three hives would have been.  Oh, and I made my first lip balm this year - it is really nice.  Will bring a sample to the next meeting. Also , Jeanne, bringing a honey sample. Hope you will have your refractometer. 

[262jp]

if you have a laying queen,You should have eggs somewhere in the hive.  If you know the hive went queenless but may have requeened and think she just hasn't started laying yet you basically have to find her to know she is there (I haven't found another way, if anyone knows I would love to hear it.).  Look on every frame for eggs, if none and no sign of the queen, I would suggest buying a mated laying queen. you are minimum 5-6 weeks out from a laying queen if everything goes perfectly.  hives are booting the drones this time of year so getting a queen raised in time and then mated and then laying you means you are 2-1/2 months from brood emerging.  If you don't have a second hive to keep putting brood in your population will be dropping.  that's a huge gap going into winter and doesn't improve your chances of over wintering. 

[Greg V]

Point there was, Tim, that two hives are better than one (this is the biggest bang for your buck).
This is so clear that no need to argue over.

But it is not that two hives are recommended.
Two are only recommended over one.
This is the wrong part.

Three hives are still better than two (the second biggest bang for your buck).
And more are even better.
But the significance of each consecutive hive is diminishing - rule of diminishing returns kicks in.
And with that the #3 is good to stop at (if you really want to stop due to $$$, time constraint, or whatever).

On Saturday, August 20, 2016 at 10:38:37 PM UTC-5, timothy.aure wrote:

You don't need three hives but 2 have been recommended .........

[Greg V]

And guess what, Jo - you don't need to spend much more money at this point.
Or much more time either (incrementally - that is).

Each additional hive in time cost does not equal the cost in time of the very first hive.
It is more like 30% of additional time and less.

Having good two good hives going already, I would just start a nuc - as soon as practically possible (next year now).

Pickup a used box/frames on a cheap - $50 investment maybe if that (there were ads even here - probably still active).
If lucky, one can find something for free, even. Little patience pays.

In spring donate a couple of frames from each hive into the nuc - free.
Let them grow a queen.
This is all.

In 1-2 months you have a fully functional, 3-way redundancy on hand.
The number of ways you can now recover (from a failed queen, for typical example) - just very significantly went up.
The nuc will slowly grow into a full size hive over the next year and will replace one of the bigger hives (the strong hives don't stay strong forever, you know; they are strong only for 1 season due to "circle of life"; each season - new count begins from zero).
Next year - repeat.

This is my own basic personal plan is, anyway.
The only difference - I build my own equipment (not buy).
Which means - I spend more time.

On Sunday, August 21, 2016 at 5:46:10 PM UTC-5, Jo Sommers wrote:

........  Don't want to spend the money or have the time commitment that three hives would have been. 

[Tim Aure]

I agree and now have 10 but it was hard to get my head around the costs... Jacket, gloves, smoker, various tools, packages, the uncertainty, sometimes stings...

Most of us need an on ramp vs just pulling into heavy traffic. Once on board we can make our own decisions.

I often tell my remodeling clients:  Make a wish list, weigh the cost vs needs, get expirienced,  trustworthy help.

In an ideal world cost is not an issue but most of us have to weigh pros @ cons🤔

Sent from my iPhone

--

[jeanne hansen]

Tim,

You said, "Most of us need an on ramp vs just pulling into heavy traffic. Once on board we can make our own decisions."

VERY NICE!  This was my exact position when I started.

 

Thanks!
Jeanne Hansen
824 Jacobson Ave
Madison, WI 53714
608-244-5094

---

From: Tim Aure <timoth...@gmail.com>
To: mad...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, August 22, 2016 9:22 AM

Subject: Re: [madbees] Hive has no new brood, just honey. First time beekeeper. Help please

[Dale Marsden]

You don't have to keep building up the number of hives that you have just to supply the rest of the world with more bees. I have kept about 50 hives every summer for over 38 years and only buy more equipment for replacements. 

If you have only one hive and it is failing at this time of year it is time to take all the honey and cull the hive. Sell the honey or just benefit form it  and next spring buy new bees. 

or

If you only want one hive and you split in the spring and now have 2 but don't want 3 or 4 next year you can take all the honey from the one with the old queen  and cull it and treat the better one so it  survives. 

Dale

---

From: Tim Aure <timoth...@gmail.com>
To: mad...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, August 22, 2016 9:22 AM

Subject: Re: [madbees] Hive has no new brood, just honey. First time beekeeper. Help please

[Kate Hillenmeyer]

Yikes, is there any hope that my hive will survive this winter? I'm going to check on them tonight and check for eggs again as well as to see if anyone is bringing in any nectar. I plan on gathering more supplies and having another hive for next year.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to madbees+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "madbees" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to madbees+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "madbees" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/madbees/hwm0XbEqpwE/unsubscribe.

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to madbees+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Kate Hillenmeyer

[Greg V]

Good idea. I agree pretty much with this approach.

So, I would not let it drop below 3 hives for redundancy and recovery reasons.
And yet would not keep more than 4-5 hives due to exactly that - becomes too much work for a small homestead operation.

Makes sense to me to cull the weakest link and split the proceeds between myself and the other bees.

Actually, interesting question...
I never done this - intentionally culling a hive in a most beneficial way to everyone (bees included).
No need to waste resources trying to save a failing colony.
It is better to reallocate those resources maybe.

On Monday, August 22, 2016 at 11:55:14 AM UTC-5, marsdenhoney wrote:

.........If you only want one hive and you split in the spring and now have 2 but don't want 3 or 4 next year you can take all the honey from the one with the old queen  and cull it and treat the better one so it  survives. 

Dale