I inspected Proteus from top to bottom (well, almost) today. There are definitely two queens. What should I do now? That is the question.
Proteus Bee, the top three boxes above now the queen excluder, had a skimpy brood pattern and not many bees. The first two pictures are from Proteus Bee. I was nervous as were the bees so I didn't snap pictures that were as good as sometimes.
The queen excluder was put on 8 days ago. You can see young larvae on the right of the second picture. That larvae was from eggs laid more recently than 8 days. That said, I was concerned about the spotty, skimpy brood pattern in this box.
The second two pictures are from Proteus A. Again you can see young larvae, suggesting a second queen in this bottom box. The comb on this box is dark from being used over and over both due to age and due to being honey bound by the honey frames in Box 2.
If you look you can see young larvae scattered all over this frame.
I am going to leave the hives as an apartment complex with the queen excluder in between the bottom two boxes and the top three. We'll hope that both groups will thrive and I can move them into two hives.
If Queen Bee does not survive, I will still have one good hive.
You can just leave it like this so as both queens laying eggs or you can move the excluder and let them decide who is gonna live. If you put the excluder to collect honey at the supers you can move the queen with 1-2 frames in a new small hive or you can just throw her out!!
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you want to divide the hives and have a new colony? Is it a space concern?
ReplyDeleteIn the third picture, the upper left-most bee also has a mite on her. Its a bit out of focus, but it looks like its there. What kind of camera do you use? The pictures (and the rest of your website) are fantastic.
ReplyDeleteMike, I posted about that Varroa mite in the post just before this one:
ReplyDeletehttp://beekeeperlinda.blogspot.com/2007/06/bee-with-varroa-mite.html
Mark, I am going to split the hives. First I wanted to post on Beemaster and have people look at the pictures because I was worried about the skimpy looking brood in the upper hive. Michael Bush looked at it and said it looked fine to him, so this weekend, I'm splitting the hive into Proteus A and Proteus Bee
Good luck with splitting your hives. I can see what you mean about the skimpy brood. Could the presence of two queens cause that? Perhaps the new queen hasn't gotten into full gear yet.
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