Letting The Bees Read The Newspaper

The bees are active and their numbers are growing. One hive already has drones in it. The various hives are beginning to pull drone cells.

Recently I have combined four hives. One other hive was so large that I decided to take a look inside. They had already begun making swarm cells--YIKES! Well, I broke those out and have plans tomorrow to make what we call a "tussenaflegger". I do not know what the english term for this is, but it involves a honey super and two brood boxes. there is a separator between the two brood boxes and a queen separator between a brood box and the honey chamber...but more about all that tomorrow or the next day.

In the lottie I had that one "super colony" and two smaller ones. I discovered that one of the hives had lost their queen. I decided to let the two hives "read the newspaper". This is a process whereby you place the queenless colony on the bottom and the colony with the queen on top of that. Separating them is a newspaper page with a couple of holes pricked in it.

The smell of the ink supposedly gives the two hives the same odour. I gave a puff of smoke below and above to further that philosophy.

Within a day or two the bees will have eaten through the paper and will have joined...hopefully without rejecting the resident queen.


In a few more days I will able able to look in there and check on the welfare of the the queen (in the first place) and the welfare of the colony in general. I sit and watch the plank just outside the entrance split and they seem to be flying happily, bringing in pollen. They do not seem particularly aggressive. I am hopeful but not sure of the outcome.

On the plus side, it is known that this time of year is a good time for combining colonies, as the bees are quite a bit more tolerant. Fingers crossed

 

Sjoerd, I showed your post to my husband (resident beekeeper) and he said he'd heard of the newspaper method, but had never seen it in action. Please let us know how it works. So far we haven't lost a queen, but it sure is nice to know how to fix it if it happens.
Please explain "They had already begun making swarm cells--YIKES! Well, I broke those out"--do you mean you destroyed the swarm cells? We have been told that once bees start making swarm cells, the old queen and her entourage are leaving no matter what you do. If the swarm cells (and new young queen) can be saved, we'd sure like to.
As Eileen said, you are a great teacher!

 

What a fascinating subject. Many years ago when I was barely taller than a beehive I seem to remember being told the bees could feed the larvae extra large amounts of royal jelly and create a new queen if their queen is too old or dies. This takes too long? Hense the newspaper method?

Jerry

 

Hallo FRANK--Mate, I have no idea how or when someone that discovered, but it is a method that has been known here for quite a long time.

EILEEN-- Well, I just looked in upon the combined colonies and the queen survived the newspaper method. I am well chuffed as you might imagine.

Hiya MARLING--I just looked in upon the two combined colonies and found the queen alive and healthy. I was chuffed that it was successful because the queen was an especially nice one. She was not only lovely, but more importantly, she produced really calm bees.
Of course there are a number of ways to fix a colony that has become queenless, this is just one of the ways. This was my choice because it is springtime and now bee colonies can more easily be combined than a bit later in the season. The other factor was, that not only was the one colony queenless, but BOTH colonies were quite small.
Swarm cells--Yes, I destroyed the swarm cells. By breaking the swarms cells out, you an postpone their swarming...and sometimes avoid it. Breaking out swarm cells every 8 or so days is a lot of work, but if you do not want to expand your colony count, then there are just a few things you can do to avoid them swarming. Last year all my colonies made swarm cells and so I had to break the swarm cells frequently, and in the end they all gave up. i did not want to expand my colonies population.
There are other methods of hindering swarms; however, I do not know the english words for the various techniques. I tried a new technique just yesterday. I shall write a little thread about it later. The technique was called a "tussenaflegger"--I know that that does not mean anything to you, but I will try and explain it in my posting on that subject in the coming days.
Naturally if you want to save the swarm cells and use the new queens, that is possible too. There are a couple of techniques to do that. If you guys do not know about them we can talk about how I do them, as I have utilized most all of the methods when I was mentoring and on my own. Perhaps your man already knows though.
Glad you liked the posting.

Hey JERRY--Yes, larvae are indeed fed royal jelly. The worksters and drone larvae are fed royal jelly for three days after they emerge from the egg, then they are given a slightly different sort of "sap"; however, larvae which will become queens will be fed royal jelly until their cell is sealed. Queens will be fed royal jelly off and on for the duration of their life.
It isn't that the process takes too long, rather it is that I do not want the colony to swarm at all. The queens are usually fine, but swarming is a built-in nature of the bee. In the wild, they swarm regularly, but when one keeps bees and does not want to have more colonies, then he tries and discourage the bees from swarming so he creates conditions that will either discourage the colony or "fool" the bees into thinking that they have swarmed. there are certain methods that can be employed. Is this clear?

 

Almost. From your message it seems that at some point there is more than one resident queen. I was under the impression that when the first queen emerged from her cell into a hive that had no queen that she would kill the occupants of other cells that the workers were feeding royal jelly. I also thought that a hive could only have one queen and that if there were more than one queen that she would leave causing the hive to split as it swarmed. My info could be a little rusty as it is over 60 years old.

Jerry

 

This is the best read I've had in a long time. Looking forward to the next chapter.

 

Hallo JERRY,
The way things usually go with swarming is that when the colony get the feeling (for whatever reason) to swarm...they stop feeding the queen so much and the queen looses weight and becomes a bit more trim. This is so that she will be fit enough to fly away and relocate with a substantial number of her colony worksters.

Now then, she continues laying eggs and the "house bees" begin making queen cells. The queen lays an egg in them (sometimes the worksters use a normal cell and then build on top of that, cell a sort of "extention". I believe that I have posted pics of these peanut shell-looking queen cells in the past.
Once the swarm cell has been completed and sealed the old queen usually swarms away (she sometimes swarms away just before the first cell has been closed). If the beekeeper is checking the frames and sees a closed queen (swarm)-cell it means that the old queen has flown away. It is too late to prevent the swarm then.

You are right that hives have only one queen but there is also an exception to the norm...it is called here, a "stille moerwisseling", or a "silent queen exchange". this is where there can exist two queens in the hive at once. This unusual situation exists for a short time and at a certain moment the old queen will leave or will be killed.

One final reaction: When the old queen has flown away and then the new queen emerges she will make a little sound, the queens in the cells will "answer", she will find them and sting them to death whilst they are still in their cells. If there are already other queens walking around the hive they will find eachother and fight it out, and some may escape and fly away.

This whole swarming thing is normal to colonies, but a beekeeper wants to prevent the swarm if possible because he could loose half his hives. That loss is expensive for the beekeeper and therefore is to be avoided if possible. There are a number of (sometimes exotic) methods which he can employ in his attempt to discourage the swarming.

I hope it is clearer for you. If not I shall try again. No worries.

Glad that you are enjoying the thread, DONNA.