[Glenasmole]

Hi everyone, this is my first post on the form, I have been reading away in the sidelines for a while but would like some advice.

A hive of mine swarmed twice at the end of June (I caught both) and found plenty more swarm cells so decided to split the hive in two. One of the hives had a mated virgin queen on the 15th July, I marked and clipped her and she was laying great. Last week during my inspections I discovered supercedure cells, now this have had built up to 2 boxes. There was not much brood or eggs, only a few scattered randomly throughout the hive.

I split the hive in 2 and left them side by side, leaving the marked queen in the smaller hive. Do you guys think its too late for a virgin queen to get mated? I don't see many drones in the hives. My idea was that one would get mated and then I could reunite them if the other didn't. I'm based in Dublin.

Thanks for any advice.

Olly

[shygirl]

hello from aberdeenshire 

id love to keep bees oneday but you just showed how much i need to learn as i never understood any of your post     

im sure someone will be along to help you soon    good luck 

[Victorian Farmer]

if the wether was ok for a fuew more weeks you would be ok but i think its time to build up for autumn iv took no honey of mine iv got 12 new hives and 3 black bees  hives so im letting them build up .

[Glenasmole]

Hi shygirl, I'm new to beekeeping, I got two small nucs (small hives) last year and started with that. There is lots to learn but join your local beekeeping assoiation, you will find lots of friendly helpful beekeepers there.

Hi Victorian Farmer, Thanks for your reply, I'm just increasing stocks this year too. I chanced the split so at least one part may get a mated queen. The weather is still pretty good here, been the best summer I can ever remember. The two halves have plenty of honey so I'm going to leave them that.

[Victorian Farmer]

I lost all but 4 hives march was bad so never had a Chance to split eney . Whit i do in June i go dawn to Perth and get 4 or 5 new queens put them in ha ire rollers and put honey in each end then take 4 frames out and that's it. Loosing all the stock has got me dawn as its cost £2000 to get going if i loose this lot that's it no more. So no honey and all new plastic hives that i have made  so not Happy. 

[HesterF]

Wow! You've had a lot going on this year. Still learning myself but judging by my inspection yesterday, there's not a lot more stores coming in and laying is certainly going down. I had two double brood boxes full a couple of weeks ago and now the bottom boxes are looking a lot emptier. Certainly didn't see any drone cells (or drones for that matter although I wasn't really looking). So even if she does mate, I'd think she'd have little chance of building up enough numbers and stores to get through the winter. So I'd definitely try and combine the two again if you can - or at least that'd be my basic take on it.

H