Fixing Laying Worker Colonies is Easy
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ค. 2024
- It's never a great feeling when you see those drone cells appear in one of your honey bee colonies. Some people shake out the hive to repurpose the resources. Some beekeepers do a newspaper combine with another colony. For me, the most reliable method for merging a laying worker colony with another hive is with a screen bottom board, allowing the bees between the colonies to touch without allowing them to kill the queen in your healthy colony.
#beekeeping #honeybee #beekeeper #layingworker
00:00 Introduction
01:00 Why to Merge Beehives
01:20 Understanding the Situation
03:10 The Most Important Piece of Equipment
07:25 A Close-up of Drone Cells
17:00 Combining Colonies
Can you post a followup video on how well this combining of hives went? Even a "short" would be fine.
Will do. I’ll be heading back out there later this week.
He did: th-cam.com/video/4RlG1RFQvfw/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=MacBeeBuzzin
I've just spent 3 weeks introducing a new frame with eggs and larva to my laying worker hive each week, hoping they would fix themselves. The last week, I even gave a frame with a swarm cell. They have rejected my attempts to help them, not taken care of the brood, and destroyed the swarm cell. I am going to try your method next. What is the maximum amount of time you would leave the screen board between the hives? I want to protect my strong hive and the queen as much as I can before removing the barrier since the weak hive has been so stubborn.
Unfortunately, that is normally the case with laying worker colonies. Once they go fully laying worker, they will rarely accept outside help while the layers are present. With this method, I find I don’t need more than 3 days most of the time. Since the bees can pass pheromone through the screen, you can theoretically leave it on for several weeks if you had to, as long as the top box has enough population to protect their resources. But, ideal would be less than a week, since many of the bees up top will move downstairs through the normal entrance once they familiarize themselves with those hive pheromones. You don’t want the top box to go unprotected and attract pests or robbers.
I would recommend upping your audio game. When your back by the hive, I struggle to hear you. And when your close to the camera, you blow out the speakers and the sound has to be turned down.
I have found that the audience don’t care to much about a fancy camera. But they will not forgive bad audio. I use a set of rode wireless mic’s. My audio stays contestant because the mic is in one location. As I move the mic moves with me. It will definitely make your channel more professional. Your a good speaker, have good audio.
I don’t disagree. Maybe one day when I have a few hundred $ to throw at a Rode setup. Right now, I’m doing good to keep up with normal beekeeping expenses as I grow my bee operation. :)
I have 2 nucs that went laying worker and I would like to save the bees and the comb. Problem is that they are not close to the hive I would like to boost. I'm afraid if I put on screen over a hive they will just fly back to where they were.
In that case, I would probably try the screen method but make sure the board doesn’t have an opening. Make sure they have some food up top. Then, put them over the strong colony for a couple of days. While they won’t be able to get out during that time (certainly not the emerging drones), they should live since they have food and will benefit from the circulation from down below. After being closed up a couple of days & sensing the queen, they should reorient and stay with the new hive. It combines a couple of methods between what’s in my video and what some beekeepers do with a multi-day incarceration of bees to force reorientation. If you don’t want to fiddle with it, you could also just do the normal screen method & let the ones who return to the original spot be. When they don’t find a home, they’ll normally look for another one to try and get into. In my experience, they end up boosting the closest hive to their previous location.
@@macbeebuzzin thanks for the advice
I don't keep bees, so i dont know how to discern the problems that you encounter, but I've seen other keepers take eggs from another hive to solve the queenless problem. If there are laying workers, would that help the colony, or is it too late at that point?
That is a common approach. It normally takes adding a frame of open brood repeatedly (often for weeks) until they decide to make a new queen. Then, you have the delay of waiting for her to mature, emerge & mate. Depending on the time of year, that works better than others. Another approach that some beekeepers use is simply shaking out the bees a ways away from the hive, because the foragers know where to return, but theoretically the laying workers don’t. The reason I like the screen combine approach is because it takes advantage of the numbers of bees by adding their workforce to another during peak honey flow and fixes their temperament in only a week. With the other 2 approaches, their mood won’t shift until a new queen is laying, which takes weeks. By combining hives, the bees benefit during the season, and I can re-split in early fall while introducing a new queen to get my hive number back up.
@@macbeebuzzin thank you so much for answering! It is very fascinating. I like that you appreciate the creative problem solving aspect of caring for bees.