So rapid expansion is good news in a way for the beekeeper, but it is also a big concern. When a colony gets too full and runs out of space they will generally form a swarm, and half of the worker bees and the existing queen will leave the colony to set up home elsewhere. Beekeepers put a lot of effort into trying to avoid that happening, because it is rare that you can catch them and get them back. So you suddenly end up with a colony half the size.
One way to deal with potential swarming is to split the hives before they get chance to swarm. The queen and half of the workers are moved into a new hive (so they think they have swarmed), and the remaining bees are left behind in the original hive (as if the bees had already swarmed and left).
So with the guidance of our mentor Mark we split both our hives into two. But the orange hive was so close to swarming (literally a day or so) we were also able to set up two new “nucs” (nucleus colonies) in the small box.
During this work on Wednesday I caught the photo below, which I have annotated to show some of the interesting features of a hive.
Unsealed worker larvae. These are the baby bees before they pupate. Look for the white grubs, curled in the bottom of the cells. These are fed by the worker bees.
Sealed worker brood. Once the larvae are ready to pupate, the workers seal the cells with “biscuit” coloured wax caps. From these will emerge young adult work bees.
Sealed drone brood. Drones (male bees) are bigger. You can recognise sealed drone cells because they have a dome-shaped wax cap. So our colonies are rearing drones, which tells us they are preparing to swarm (drones are needed to mate with the new queens).
Queen cup. When a colony is preparing to swarm it will build a number of “queen cells”, one of which will produce the new queen to head the colony after the old queen has left with the swarm to set up camp elsewhere. The workers start by building a “queen cup”, into which the current queen lays an egg.
Sealed Queen Cell. Once there is an egg in the queen cup, the workers build it into a long cell that hangs down vertically (rather than being horizontal like all other cells). The presence of this cell in our orange hive was the red flag: once a queen cell is sealed the queen is encouraged to leave the hive with a swarm. So we caught it just in time.
Looking forward, we have a lot to keep an eye on over the next few months. We still need to inspect the old colonies to ensure they do not build up and try to swarm again. And we need to see that the new colonies get a new queen, and that she goes out and mates and starts laying eggs.
