In this video Laurence Edwards inspects a beehive that was part of a small‑cell foundation experiment promised to be varroa‑free. After about a year the colony has suffered a series of setbacks: the original queen was replaced, the hive swarmed, the first and second matings failed, and the colony ended up with a drone‑laying queen. Edwards explains how his delayed intervention after the swarm allowed the problem to compound, leading to a colony composed mostly of drones and old workers with no viable queen. He demonstrates the frames, confirms the drone‑laying status, and declares the colony unsalvageable. His recommended remedy is to shake the bees out, create a split from a healthy, multi‑brood colony, and introduce a mated queen, rather than trying to rescue the failing hive. He expresses frustration and takes responsibility for the mis‑management, concluding that the small‑cell foundation experiment is paused until the errors are corrected and a new split can be started.
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This was the colony that was given to me by Jod on small cell foundation with the promise that it will never need to be treated for varroa, and we are about 12 months in and we've still got bees inside, even though I'm doing my best to mess things up. We've changed the queen, the colony swarmed, the mating failed, we requeened them. I'm going back in today to see if we've still got a good colony of bees inside. They're on double brood now, all on small cell foundation. Fingers crossed we've got a successful mating and the bees can build up again going into winter. Let's get inside, see how they're doing. It's not looking good, I'm afraid. The second mating also failed and we are left with a drone-laying queen. Absolutely gutted, really frustrating, because I kind of blame myself for this one. I restricted the colony for too long, it swarmed, and then if you don't give the bees what they need when they swarm, you can end up with this. I do not like leaving it to swarm cells to get mated because you can just set the colony back so far, and this is a good example of what happens when it goes wrong. Now I'm not saying just adding a mated queen in solves all of the problems, and obviously you have to pay for that mated queen, but this is the UK and this is the risk that you take when your colony swarms and you don't fix it quickly. Drone-laying queens, and this one is barely worth even trying to salvage. Very, very annoyed. Let's have a close-up of this colony and I'll show you the frames. There's no doubt about it though, this is a drone-laying queen, good for nothing. So no doubt about it, in there you can see we've got some cells where virgins have emerged, and there was either a drone-laying queen in there previously or one of those virgins has failed. But whenever I see this, all I do— it's the simplest thing in the world, but it is a little bit heartbreaking— you just got to shake the bees out. There's no saving this. It's about 3 frames of bees, lots and lots of drones, lots of old bees, no use to anyone. If you've got another colony, what you should do here is you should just shake the bees out, give it a few days, and then make yourself a nice healthy split from a colony with brood in all stages. This here is a wasted cause. Don't throw your money after this one. Don't try and introduce a queen into this when it's this Add 2 or 3 frames of droney brood, shake the bees out, make up a nice new split from another colony, and then add in a mated queen. So I'm gutted. This is the end of the experiment on small cell foundation for the time being because of my own stupid errors and letting the colony swarm. Should have got in there earlier, should have given them the space, and I probably should have just added in a mated queen when I knew that the colony had already swarmed. All I can do now though is shake out these bees, let them go into another colony, seal everything up because, you know, you've got to be on the safe side, and then we I'll make some more splits and we can start again.
