Saturday, 23 June 2012

I was suprised to find my original colony of bees still active today. With the wax moth problem, general low numbers and constant rain since they were split from Boyds colony it seems to have been one long struggle for them. The numbers are still very low but there is brood hatching out and foraging bees coming and going.





In contrast to the swarm from lucky Dave.......



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6 comments:

  1. Unknown23 June 2012 at 19:48

    unfortunately , with the dotted about brood pattern and the domed capping , I think you may have layer workers rather than a colony headed by a queen ....I may be completely wrong ...I wonder have you seen the queen ??

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  2. Boyd Brooks24 June 2012 at 10:51

    Hi Shane
    From what I've read Marise is correct. The colony will slowly die out as they are only producing drones (the domed cells) and will not be able to produce workers and certainly not a queen. A sad situation really but an interesting experiment/observation in colony dynamics. Given the close proximity of the hives its probably not even an option to combine them.

    Boyd

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    Replies
    1. Lord Tedric27 June 2012 at 22:48

      Just a quick note on combining. Be careful it's not uncommon for laying workers to attack introduced queens.

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  3. Lord Tedric26 June 2012 at 22:16

    Hate to add to the general gloom but will have to say that's exactly what I thought looking at the photo's

    Dave

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  4. Lord Tedric27 June 2012 at 22:52

    Shane the other bees look great have they drawn out any other comb and started laying yet.

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  5. Shane28 June 2012 at 07:27

    Thanks for the comments everyone. Like Boyd said, It's quite interesting if nothing else! I'll try to document their fate with pics whenever I can. The other two hives seem to be doing fine lots of activity from dawn until dusk with lots of pollen going into the hives.

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