Laurence Edwards inspects a nuc split to confirm the new queen has been accepted and is laying eggs. He finds the queen cage eaten through and spots eggs on the frames, signs of successful introduction. Egg laying can take 2-3 weeks depending on colony size and weather.
Episode 4 of the Making Splits for Winter series. In this video, we're going to check up on the queen, see if she's been released, and see if she's laying eggs. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Going to keep this video really short as always. Let's get straight in, see if the queen's been released, see if we've got some eggs, see how the colony's getting on. So this is what the colony is looking like without me taking any frames out. You can still see the queen cage there. Just wanted to show you it before I take it out though, because I think there's been a decent amount of expansion in a week there, and we're up to around 3 frames of bees now. Cows in the background at this apiary, so much fun. But yeah, we're up to around 3 frames of bees, and they're expanding nicely. And you look down, the queen's not going to be in that cage, but it looks like nice behaviour towards the cage. I reckon we're going to find the queen walking around on the frames, and I reckon we're going to see some eggs as well. So let's get in, see how they're getting on. So here's our queen cage. They've eaten through that fondant. There's no queen in there, so you're either going to find the queen on the frames or dead on the floor in the hive or out the front. I think we're going to find her on the frame, so let's get in, see if we can find that queen. And there we have it, first frame, we've found the queen. She's looking great. That is definitely a successful introduction. Bees are being really friendly with her, but if you find her on the frames, that's it, the queen's been introduced. Let's get on, take a look at some other frames, see if we can see some eggs. That's the best sign, but if you don't see eggs straight away, it's not the end of the world. It does depend on the size of the colony, the state of the weather as well. If it's raining and the colony doesn't want to expand, they don't necessarily lay straight away. It can take 2 to 3 weeks for that queen to come into lay, so if you don't see eggs straight away, It's not an issue, but it's always nice to see just to make sure that everything's going okay. So I'll pull out a couple of frames, see if we can find any eggs. And it's always difficult to show you this on camera, but hopefully you can see that we've got eggs in the center of the frame. She's not laid loads, so over here on the edge, no eggs. And you look into the center and you can see some eggs. So I do apologize, whenever you're looking for eggs on camera, it is so difficult. Hopefully you can see those eggs there though. That means we've got a successfully introduced queen, she's laying eggs, everything should be fine with this colony. So in terms of other frames, I've still got that other frame that's got half a frame of capped stores, but you can see, if you remember, I had half a frame of open stores as well, and they have consumed that. But I'm still not in a position, I don't think, to feed this colony, so I'm just going to hold off just for a week or two because I don't want to clog up any of the frames with stores. I might do a little bit of syrup feeding, but I'll hold off for a couple of weeks before I do that. So there we go, successful introduction. It's as easy as that. I honestly cannot remember the last time I had a failed introduction with a queen. Just need to go through all of those steps, get them to the point where they're hopelessly queenless before you pop the tab for introduction, then leave it at least 3 days before you go back in, and it is pretty much foolproof. Failed introductions come in when there's virgins lurking around in there and they just kill the queen. That I would say accounts for over 90% of failed introductions. So as long as you're sure they're hopelessly queenless, use that method and you'll be really, really onto a winner. But this colony here looks in such a good position. We're into the first week of August now, and around here there's still a little bit of a flow going on. We get flows late on into August, so I'm not going to feed this colony just yet. I'm going to wait for the weather to turn, for the flows to stop, and then I'll start to feed a little bit of 1:1 syrup. And I know that goes against all of the textbooks, feeding 1:1 syrup later on in the year, but what I'll do is I want to feed for a couple of weeks of 1:1 to extend that flow period out, to turbocharge the queen, to get her to rear as much brood as she possibly can. And then I've still got loads of time going into September and October to feed 2:1 syrup for them to store, to get them through the year. I find that is a really good tip if you want to take Small splits and build them up to strength going into winter. We'll cover all of that in this series though, so next week we'll come back, see how much this colony has expanded, take a look at the flows and the weather around us, potentially look to start feeding 1:1 syrup. So I hope you enjoyed that video, hope you found it useful. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.
