This Beehive Is Full OF Problems - Bald Brood And A Colony Preparing To Swarm

Oh dear, we have a problem. I've left it too late. I knew I was pushing my luck this year. Last year I was gifted a colony of small cell foundation bees with a promise that I would never ever need to treat them for varroa because the small cell foundation apparently means that the varroa cannot reproduce effectively and the bees can keep on top of them. I'm not vouching for that, that's just what I was told. What I do know though is that they're alive, they didn't die this year. I've still not treated them. There's bees inside. What we're gonna do today is take a look inside, see how healthy the bees are, see how healthy the brood is, see if there's any varroa diseases that are sitting around in that colony, and then we're gonna double brood the colony using some more small cell foundation. So lots of activity at the entrance, maybe not as much as some of the other colonies. I think I'm probably due to get that reducer out as well today, but good to see there's plenty of activity. Let's get inside, see how the bees are doing. So we've still got lots of bees in here. Looks really nice, covering all of that queen excluder there. I'm quite excited to get in and see what's going on here. Last time I went into this colony, I got battered, but it was quite a bad day and a lot of my bees were misbehaving. So hopefully today they'll be a little bit easier on me. So you can see they've still got the numbered frames marked 32, exactly the same as they were before. Probably long overdue a super, this one. I'm a little bit behind this year in terms of supers because I'm so scared of putting them on early now. Weather's been rubbish. Today has shown that I'm late, definitely late. 5th or 6th of May today. I need to get in here and I need to make sure that there is no chance that these bees are going to swarm due to a lack of space. But nothing visible so far in terms of any deformed wing virus. Team just as prolific as the rest of my bees, filling up their brood nest. Hopefully we've not left it too late. Hopefully they've not swarmed. Enough of me yapping. Let's get inside, see if we can see some brood. So I'm not going to bore you on every video though. Clean hive tool, clean gloves, and wow, I'm really, really impressed. Really nice, good frame of brood there. Definitely not impacting on the queen's ability to lay. Really nice, healthy brood in a very good pattern. Give you a little close-up of it there. Beautiful frame of brood. Really happy with that. Flip on the other side. Same again. Really, really good pattern. Love it when you see the lines of the wired foundation in there. I think that is super cool. Just going to shake those bees off there just to give myself a little bit of room. Pop that frame off to the side. And oh dear, we have a problem. I've left it too late. I knew I was pushing my luck this year. I've got swarm cells and I've got swarm cells due to a lack of space. Really, really frustrating. Not what I wanted to see, but I'm going to go with a slightly different approach today. So what I normally say to you is if you find swarm cells, make sure you do a split. Do an artificial swarm, do whatever you can. Don't do a reactive demeray, that definitely doesn't work. I would say find swarm cells and they're open, do a split. Simple as that. However, with this colony here, I'm going to treat it slightly differently because what we're doing here is we're looking to minimize the impact of varroa on this colony by using small cell foundation. Now if this colony here does go and Swarm, and then they're going to requeen themselves. Not the end of the world because I'm going to get myself a little bit of a brood break in there, which is going to help with that varroa load, which is kind of what I'm aiming for with this colony. So if this was any other colony, I would say do a split. That's the only thing you can do to keep your bees. I've got open charged swarm cells in here, which I'll show you in a little bit. But today what I'm going to do is something very, very different. I'm just going to take down all of the Swarm cells. Bad practice, probably not going to stop them swarming, but you never know, it might stop them swarming. So we do this as a little bit of an experiment. We're going to take down all of the swarm cells, we're going to add the supers on, and we are going to see what they do. If they're going to try and swarm again, we will see, and we will follow it up in a later video. So hopefully you should be able to see on that frame there, really, really nice juicy cell. That side over there, not so much of a nice cell, but I'm I'm so impressed with the level of brood in this colony. Like, this queen is an absolute monster. Wall-to-wall brood, really nice laying pattern. I'm the one at fault here. I have not given them enough space. I think I actually underestimated how prolific this queen was going to be. I thought I had time, and it shows that I'm probably about a week or so out. So you should be able to see there, just on the edge, that queen cell is not yet capped over, but that is probably about a day from being capped over, so we're lucky to get in here today. Going to carry on going through though, see if we can find any more before I start taking them down and see if we can find that queen. So you can see there, another really, really chunky swarm cell just about to be capped. These were going to swarm, if not today, then definitely tomorrow. Look how close that is to going. So all I'm doing here is I'm going through. When you see open charge cells like that, The queen is almost certainly going to be there. Like, I can look in that colony, it's a full box of bees. I don't think they've swarmed yet, so I'm just going to keep on going through, find that queen, and I think I'm going to slightly change what I'm going to do to this colony here because I really like these bees. I like the genetics, and I don't want to risk losing that queen. However, what I'm seeing on this frame here may mean I'm completely wrong on that one. So as always, the bees have thrown me a bit here. So I've got one cell that is completely capped, Today is about 21-22 degrees, perfect weather for them to swarm. And you know what, I reckon they're probably waiting for today to swarm. It's about half 11 at the moment. I reckon they're going to go in the next hour or so. So I'm not going to wait around and hang around for them to go. I'm going to keep on going through and I'm going to do my best to find the queen. I reckon she's still in here. So whoever told you that the queens always swarm on the first capping of the cell, Definitely, I've said that before as well. Not that they're talking nonsense, but it's just not as clear-cut as that. I reckon this swarm would have gone today. Swarms like to go in between, say, 11 and 3 o'clock. They swarm at the best time of the day for the bees. So I'm kind of almost tempted to stay here a little, do a campout and see if they go today. I reckon they probably would, but I have found the queen. So we found a colony here that's got a capped swarm cell, numerous swarm cells, about 20 swarm cells in this colony. And I've also got the queen here. If you haven't seen the queen, she's just around the middle somewhere like that at the moment. But I am going to change what I'm going to do with this colony now. I'm going to cage my queen. I'm going to take that queen off and I'm going to use it elsewhere. I'm then going to reduce all of those swarm cells down to a single open charge cell and I'm going to let them requeen naturally. That means I retain everything there. I don't lose all of my flying bees. I don't lose a swarm. I don't lose my nice queen with good genetics. But I also get the benefit for this colony here, which maybe has a high varroa load, that they get a little bit of a brood break as well. Trying to work with the bees on this one. Hopefully I'm doing the right thing. So there she is. There's my queen. I wish she was standing next to the capped cell. That would be a really good shot. But definitely got a queen still in here. Not clipped her wings, so she would have been long gone. But I'm going to cage her up and then we're going to continue to look at the rest of the brood. There we go. My queen is now safely caged. I'll pop her in the pocket and we can continue with the So first thing I'm going to do now is go and find a nice open charged cell, keep that off to one side, shake off all of the other frames, take down every single cell. All I'm leaving this colony here with is one charged open cell, and then we'll have a quick look at the bees, quick look at the brood. Probably going to do a varroa drop test after the swarm period here, after that new queen has got mated, because I'd quite like to see the impact that that brood break is going to have. I know, I know, I should do one now and I should do one after as well, but I'm not that organized. I didn't bring the stuff with me. But let's get inside now, shake them all down, get them prepped, and then we'll look at those bees. Now, if I was going to choose between these 2 cells on here, I'd definitely go with the one lower down. The one at the top is a little bit too long for me, so I'm going to squish that one off. This one here is probably going to be the one I'm going to go for because it's really, really close to being sealed and I can see up inside it and see that there's jelly and see that there's a good larva. And you know what? I need to check stuff before I say it on video. And this is my promise to you. I will always, always, always let you know my mistakes if I make them on camera. See if anybody can see what is wrong with what I've just said there. And what I'm going to do is I'm just going to flip this round a little bit and see if you can see. So I'll zoom in now for anybody who didn't get that. But look at that cell again. You can see that the larva has dropped. Shouldn't be at the bottom there. It should be sitting at the top. I can see the larva at this end where really it should be sitting up at that end. If you left that one queen cell, you would not get a queen coming out of it. That is a dud. So they both need taking down. So just zooming in there, you can see you've got a few little holes on the brood there. Holes in the brood cappings there does indicate an issue with varroa, but I'm not seeing any issue kind of with the bees in terms of their buildup, and I'm not seeing any disease. I'm not seeing any deformed wing virus. So at the moment, it looks like the bees are managing it well. But for me, for this colony here, this is just the first year of no treatment. So we just have to monitor that and see how we get on. Right, I've taken down the 2 cells on this frame, but look at that brood. Absolutely beautiful brood. See if you can spot the single frame of chalk brood and a tiny bit of ball brood in there as well. Now, ball brood can indicate wax moth issues. It can also indicate VSH tendencies, so varroa-sensitive hygiene. I'm not looking at that and thinking, oh, that's an issue. I'm looking at that and thinking, oh, that's a potential trait for these bees, and that they're good at cleaning out the varroa. And the bald brood is maybe a byproduct of that. I'm no expert, but I'm not looking at that and seeing it's an issue. So you can definitely see why they swarmed. Look at the amount of stores we've got in there. Some of that still does look a little bit crystallized as well, so maybe they're struggling for space. Scrap that, they're definitely struggling for space. So I know the normal advice here is to go for one open charged queen cell, but I don't like the look of the open charged queen cells here. The one I did like the look of, the larva had fallen. And then the rest of them, nope, not keen on them, so I'm going to go with the capped swarm cell in this instance. I promised John when I got these bees off him that I would run all of the brood always on small cell foundation, and that's what I've got here, a ready-prepared brood box with small cell foundation, which you can get from Thorns if you want to try this yourself. The plan today was to come to this apiary and to put 2 supers on every single colony. I've already got a couple that are trying to swarm, so I've double brooded this one, and I'm just going to put one single super on the top. So there we go, small cell bees. I've taken their queen, I've taken down all of the queen cells that are in there barring that one capped cell. I've put the queen excluder on, I've added a super. Hopefully we're going to come back in a few weeks' time and that queen will be mated. Not going to interfere with them until then, no need to go in now for at least 4 weeks, just leave that queen to do what she needs to do. Never ever open colonies up when there's virgins running around.