Forest Grove backyard bees - lots of brood

[petersanz]

Hi All,
With the warm weekend weather I dug into three backyard hives in Forest Grove. Thought I'd post a quick rundown of the action.

Hive #1 (B Street) - Italians that survived a bear attack the previous winter and were slow to recover until I requeened in summer. No harvest.
Overall a healthy hive but I had put on a spacer for winter feeding (fondant) and in the past two weeks the bees had built a ton of comb in this area and the queen laid lots of brood in it. Ugh. Figured I can't let that mess keep so cleaned it all out, pulled the spacer, and then added a few blank frames to keep them busy. Also reversed the boxes and did lots of general housekeeping pulling burr comb and excess propolis, etc. Still feeding fondant. Lots of pollen coming in.

Hive #2 (Mountain View Lane) - Carniolans from a Glory Bee package last year. Did great and harvested a super of honey.
Raging with lots of bees and many frames of brood with great pattern. Decent honey stores and I'm still feeding fondant. Pulled a frame of eggs to give to Hive #3. More housekeeping pulling burr comb and also cleaning comb on the bottom of frames in the top box.

Hive #3 - Italians from a Glory Bee package last year. These were MEAN bees and swarmed at least once. Still managed to harvest a super of honey.
Now a fading hive. Only speckled drone brood and dwindling bees. Still good honey stores so presumably a failing (failed) queen and not starvation or disease the issue. I wasn't able to find a queen (or laying worker?) but as an effort to save this hive I gave them a full frame of eggs from Hive #2, hoping that they raise a new queen on their own, she isn't killed by a remnant queen i missed, and that she gets out for a good nuptial flight and finds drones. Lots of "ifs" and might just be a failed hive that I let go or combine with another. Still feeding fondant.

I've got Apistan strips on order from Ruhl for spring mite treatment as soon as they arrive. Plan on making nuc splits from the two healthy hives as swarm maintenance.

Thoughts?

Best,
Peter

[HarryVanderpool]

Do you know any commercial beekeepers in your area or within driving distance?
If so, call them and ask if you can buy one queen.
Go to the dink and carefully look for the drone laying queen. She's there, so keep looking until you find her. When you find her, drop her to the ground and step on her.
Then, go to the booming hive, locate the queen and keep track of her whereabouts while at the same time move 2 or 3 frames of sealed brood from the boomer WITH adhering bees into the dink.
If the donor hive is FOAMING with bees go ahead and shake an additional frame of bees from the brood nest into the dink.
Now, place your new queen in between the brood frames with candy pointing down.
DO NOT POKE A HOLE IN THE CANDY!!!
Fill the feeder with syrup, close the hive and then DO NOT TOUCH for at least 10 days.
That is what I would do.

[petersanz]

Hi Harry,
Normally I would have done exactly what you recommended. However, this early in the season I was under the impression that there were zero queens available. In fact I was at Ruhl last week and was told even queens from California weren't available. As a result I figured any hive with a failing/failed queen would have to hold until there were queens to buy or I'd have to try to get them to rear a queen.

Best,
Peter

ps - I'm in Forest Grove, 45 mins west of Portland.

[rak]

Apistan? Why not apivar? I can't believe they still sell the apistan stuff.

[petersanz]

Hi Rak,
I'm actually using Apivar for spring mite treatment - not Apistan. Sorry, just mispoke.
Peter