# Tree trimming company called and I ran to their aid.



## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

:thumbsup::thumbsup:


----------



## S4 basics (Mar 15, 2014)

My brother and I had an almost identical adventure last year east of Lafortune Park about this time. It also was huge. Hope it works out great for you.


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

I don't know anything about cut out.
But why waited 10 days later to do a QC inspection?
The hives without a queen will make them in a day or 2.
Also, did you see any mites on the bees?


----------



## Arpolis (Aug 26, 2013)

Well this is where I am still learning. My thoughts: There is a lot of debre in the comb like wood shavings from the chain saw and such. I wanted to give the bees plenty of undesturbed time to clean up and start attaching comb. Around the 10 day mark the queen cells should be capped over and little chance to disturb the larva in them. With shaky rubber banded comb I thought if they only had a few larva to choose from then I don't want to mess up the larva. I would like for them to start their own queen from their stock over eggs from my Carnolean bees. Better chance of keeping genetics devers even if the virgin queen mates with a Carnolean drone.


----------



## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Arpolis, opinions vary, but I would agree more with you actually. But here is some math. from the time an egg is laid the bees have 4.5 to 5 days to decide if they will make a queen from it. so if in fact your queen was lost they have to start a queen cell within the next 5 days or the opportunity is lost. Your leave them alone to recover from the disaster is definitely valid. Here you have conflicting needs. the need to let them recover opposed to the need to assure they have opportunity to make a new queen if needed. With that I would say let them be for 5 days then check for status of queen. best case you find eggs and can limit the disruption. next best is to find queen cells under way and can again let them be for a time. worst case you will find no eggs which I would not even want to make that much disruption that early and having to give them more brood. For me it would be a check at 5 days that is very short and determine to add more open brood or not. IF it required a search for eggs or the queen I would not do it. I would add a frame of brood just as a safe measure and leave them alone again. Sort of a trade off between the opposing needs.


----------



## Arpolis (Aug 26, 2013)

Ok I see your point. I think I will try and look into it late tomorrow afternoon which will be the 5 day mark. See what I want to do from there.


----------



## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

Arpolis said:


> Ok I see your point. I think I will try and look into it late tomorrow afternoon which will be the 5 day mark. See what I want to do from there.


:thumbsup: It appears you put a lot of thought to what you're doing keep up the good work!


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

After 3 days is the right time to do a hive inspection for the cells.
They are still small and repairable by the bees in case you tore up some.
Make sure you mark the frame on the position of the developing cells. This way
you can look right into that location the next time. A big ripe cell 5 days later will
have some difficulty full of RJ that the bees just remove them should they tear up.
Also you want to know if these are the mature larvae that they choose or the young
larvae for these cells.


----------



## Arpolis (Aug 26, 2013)

Interesting. I always figured that the larva will be of an age that will produce a good laying queen. May not be the absolute best like one strait hatched from an egg and immediately fed Royal jelly but never too old to cause issues. I will try and get a look tomorrow. See what I can find. I'll try and post pics if I can.


----------



## Arpolis (Aug 26, 2013)

Ok so checked out the bees today. I am glad and sad that I did so. From the pics you can see the level of gross that was in the hive. It was crawling with maggots. Not sure if it was wax moths or other flying infestation but it was gross. Nearly a half inch thick on the floor of the hive. The hive floor was wet still from the decomposing maggot infested mess. I threw away 4 frames out of the hive that had either slimy nectar and pollen or lots of maggots. 

I was happy to do some cleanup for the bees but then what I feared had happened... I found queen cells. That where so close to the wall of the hive they attached and whe I pulled the frame out I pulled the larva out of their queen cells too... 

I looked closely and there was zero larva left. Only capped brood. On the frame with the queen cells was about a 2-3 square inch section of maggots on the opposit side of the bees. Not sure if I need to cut those out. 

So I went to my other feral hive from a cut out that is doing extremely well in one of my long hives and took two frames with obvious eggs laid along all the comb with some nurse bees. Added that to the new hive with a couple empty frames. I added a small entrance reducer and shut it all up. I will probably check back in a week.


----------



## Arpolis (Aug 26, 2013)

Now that I thought about it. Those maggots have to be small hive beetle larva. Makes sense, there was a lot of those beetles in the original hive. I am pretty sure from shear numbers of those I may need some treatment to help this hive get healthy again.


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Here is what I would do next.
Combine this hive with your other feral hive. Use the proper introduction method.
Put a queen excluder between the new and old hives to separate the queen cells in 
development. Removed all but 2 of the largest queen cells and mark where they are on
the frame for better inspection later on. 
The reason for doing so now is to save this weak hive. Because the feral hive will keep
all the SHB at bay and clean up any slimy mess that they created so far. Without the
feral hive to help out this hive will be gone in about less than a week before your inspection.
We don't have SHB infestation here but from the shear numbers on the pic this hive will not going
to last for long. So the only answer I can come up with is to combine it with a strong feral hive: 1) To
save the genetics from the queen cells. 2) To give them more protection and some clean up of the SHB maggots.
Another method is to not use the QE but still do the combine with the feral hive. Then make up a new stronger
nuc with these QCs in. But this nuc has to be strong enough to keep the SHB out and in check.


----------



## Arpolis (Aug 26, 2013)

Well the queen cells I found are toast. They ripped when I move the frame with them on it. I have no queen excluder because I never needed one before. I'll post updates on progress soon.


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Oh well, without a strong force to keep these SHB at bay this
cut out is going to have a hard time to establish itself. No queen either so
the morale is very low right now. The newly emerged bees are too weak to
even defend themselves. Then combining is the only option for now. Later on
you can do a hive split again when they grow some more.


----------



## Arpolis (Aug 26, 2013)

Ok I wanted to give an update if anyone wanted to see how this is ending up. After cleaning out the hive the next day I got some guard star and used as directed around the hive. I checked it today after adding all those fresh eggs and I think I counted 17 queen cells. Including one very tiny one from the original comb that I squished since it was so small and the others looked so good. I saw ZERO hive beetle larva and not one beetle in the hive. I think this hive is well under way for a full recovery.


----------



## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

Good deal! Hive beetles can be really hard to beat down looks like you'll be okay. By the way one queen cell in the first pic is only 24 to 48 hrs. to emergence it appears to me.


----------



## Arpolis (Aug 26, 2013)

Cool hopefully in a couple weeks I have a strong queen to build this hive up.


----------

