Woodside Apiary: May 2020

Last year I gave a late mated queen in a nuc to a beekeeper friend. This was a very small nuc and so you would expect that they would need to be kept in ideal conditions in order to overwinter successfully. However shortly after taking possession a storm struck, the nuc was blown over and the majority of the bees we’re tipped out onto the ground. Their new owner being a particularly caring beekeeper, carefully scooped up as many bees as possible but resigned herself to the most likely outcome would be a failed colony.
I was delighted to hear from her last week when she told me that the small colony had made it through the winter and spring and was doing extremely well. The queen I was told was, and I quote, “HUGE AND VERY BLACK”, Oh dear, it’s the same year after year, the queens that I sell or pass on seem to be the very best.
Today I received a photo and video of the queen. The beekeeper only has a yellow marking pen which is why the queen isn’t marked green for 2019.
I get a lot of satisfaction from hearing stories about the queens that we raise here a Woodside Apiary.

The first of this year’s queens are out for mating now, let’s hope that they are as hardy and successful as the queen featured above.

Why not have some fun with your bees and try something new?

Last year, out of necessity I set up a two queen hive. I used a twinstock nucleus hive. Basically these are two five frame nucs sat next to each other on a floor that keeps the two colonies apart, the entrances to each half are on opposite sides of the hive, each has two half sized crown boards and is sheltered under a single National roof. These can save on equipment: one stand, one roof etc and are flexible in their use, an extra five frame brood box can be added for instance giving the bees more room to expand their brood nest and in this configuration, as twin double nucs they over winter well, having more stores than a single nuc and share brood warmth. They will in fact construct their separate brood nests centered as if it were a single nest. Any frames of foundation placed next to the centre of the two colonies will be drawn out really quickly .

So back to last year, I had two newly mated queens in one of these twinstock hives. Their new home wasn’t ready to accept them but they were growing well, to the point where I thought there was a risk of them swarming. I didn’t have any spare five frame boxes so couldn’t give them extra room. I didn’t want to take out frames to weaken them because then they’d need time to build up. What to do? Under normal circumstances a beekeeper would just add a super or two to a conventional hive that was in need of room, so that is exactly what I did. However, the two queens cannot be allowed to meet, one or the other would come to a premature end.
What I did was unite the colonies with newspaper. This was placed across both colonies, confining them to their respective boxes. A queen excluder was placed on top of the paper, this was the plastic type that has no bee space below, not my favourite by any means but this would confine the two queens to their own brood chambers. A super then completed the stack.
The bees from both colonies would chew through the paper and gain access to the super and merge peacefully. They both got more room and I was able to maintain two strong nucs below for a couple of weeks. The left over super and bees when the nucs were moved on were later combined overnews paper to another colony.

I was thinking of this earlier today because I have a similar set up. Two of the nucs that had been split down to provide bees and brood to make cell builderswere placed into a twin stock type hive. They both consisted of a laying queen, one frame of brood and a frame of stores, drawn comb filled each half box. They had now built back up again and were ready to move on, or swarm! I decide to try something new again, I added an extra five frame brood box to each side and a super over, uniting as before with paper and a plastic queen excluder.

My thoughts are:

To add further brood boxes, from which I can then harvest brood and bees to make nucs to get more queens mated.
Add more supers to get a honey crop.
Or maybe or more likely, a combination of both. After all we have all read that one large colony is more productive than two colonies half the size. Removing five or ten frames of brood and bees from this hive, with two laying queens and a shared work force, should not knock them back too much. Replacing the lost frames with foundation frames should enable them to recover quickly, resulting in more drawn comb for subsequent use. Indeed if not managed imaginatively, I think this colony population could explode.
Another option would be to use this set up to effectively bank a laying queen. If I required a queen to replace one lost, I could take one from this twin hive, unite tho whole colony under one queen, the bees wouldn’t mind at all, the remaining queen would as far as they’re concerned be one of their own. There are probably other options or possible uses for this two queen hive.

As everything under the sun and in beekeeping this isn't anything new. I have taken "inspiration" from watching Michael Palmer and A Canadian Beekeeper's Blog videos on you tube. Mike Palmer uses multiple five frame box hives as brood factories, Ian Steppler uses three queens in narrower Langstroth boxes under twin stacks of wider supers (actually brood boxes) separated by queen excluders obviously!

Some pics of constructing the two queen hive today: