How to help a battered colony get back up to strength
News from the Fonmon Apiary with Harold Williams
ALTHOUGH spring blossoms are emerging, the unsettled weather is preventing the bees from accessing their offerings.
I have just spent the first week in Scotland (Inverness) where it has been wall to wall sunshine and temperatures of 12ᵒc. Beekeepers there are delighted and say that they have not had a spring like this one for ages.
Here at Fonmon things are very different. Foragers are to be seen but not in any great numbers. As of yet, I have not been able to open up any of the six colonies that were exposed to the elements due to Storm Henk. When I do get to open up the colonies, I am hoping to see the Queens – or evidence that they are alive, i.e., eggs and larvae.
Should I find died out colonies, I can look to the surviving colonies to provide the wherewithal to enable me to replace those that have been lost.
How will I do that?
Option 1 is to set up a nucleus box (small hive) and put into it a frame containing eggs and larvae taken from a thriving colony. To this box I will add additional frames containing honey and pollen. There will be no foragers in this setup. Any foragers that were on the frame I am using to start the new colony will leave and return to their own colony. Left behind will be nurse and house bees that are not yet adult enough to go out foraging.
The task of the nurse/house bees in a settled colony is to look to the welfare of a hives internals, ie storage of incoming nectar and pollen plus care of eggs and larvae and various other tasks. Within 24 hours, the bees in my nucleus box will become aware that they do not have a Queen! How do bees respond to such a situation?
A colony without a Queen cannot survive!
They have eggs – some of which will be female and there will also be larvae that will be female. Larvae older than three days are not viable, so the eggs will become the new Queen providers. I say providers because only one Queen is required, but the bees make several backups.
Once an egg destined for Queen Hood has hatched it will receive an exclusive diet of Royal Jelly! This is the magic potion that ensures that each selected larvae will become a Queen. Once a new Queen is out and recognised by the colony, all of the backup members will be disposed of (bumped off).
Our new Queen must now fly out when conditions allow and get mated. When this is achieved, she will lay eggs that will become female or drones (males) as the colony demands. Our nucleus box is fast expanding, more space is required due to the egg production of the Queen, and the nurse/house bees are now old enough and have themselves become foragers.
All of the bees and frames of our now thriving nucleus/colony will be transferred to a larger box; Very shortly, they will have an ample supply of foragers and can be left to their own devices. Note! Things can and do go wrong. The weather as always is a dominating factor here.
Wish me luck.
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