This Didn't Go To Plan...

Double brood, lots of bees. Let's get inside and see how they've done. So I know it looks like it's treble brood. It's not, that's just the Flow Super. Got nothing in here. And then as you can see, I'm just storing the queen excluder up there. And then we've got the crown board underneath. So let's open up this crown board now and see what is inside. So looks like a decent amount of bees. Also looks like a huge amount of stores in here. Probably too much stores for this colony, which is good. Means that I'm not gonna have to feed. What I definitely wanna see at this point of the year though, I wanna see some eggs. I wanna see the queen. I've not been into this colony for weeks, if not months, and I just need to make sure that everything is okay with it. We've not got a drone laying queen and all is good. Very interesting signs on that first frame there. What that's showing there is that bees have produced a lot of stores and then they are eating it. They're kind of not just storing it. See how you've got this pattern here where you've got capped brood and then empty cells in the middle? That is bees uncapping the stores to eat or uncapping the stores to move it around a little bit. Yeah, not 100% happy with this hive. I have to say it looks like it's gone backwards. So I'm really hoping that they They haven't swarmed. That would be a sign that they have swarmed with the fact that you've got removal of stores. Definitely a sign there. Another sign is there's just not that many bees in here. Like, I was expecting to open this up and there to be a huge amount of bees, like, bubbling over the top again. We've got frames there where the bees are moving stuff around, which indicates to me that they probably did. They probably filled the colony up and were full at some point. Everything was full, and then some bees have gone, and then the bees are compressing stuff back down. Interesting to see. I've just taken a peek down into the bottom. I'm not liking what we're seeing there. I think we're going to see a drone laying queen in here. There is just not enough bees in this colony. Like I said, I hope I'm proved wrong, but this does not bode well for me. So starting to get a few more bees on the frames now, but that's a very strange frame. That looks like it was full of honey at one point and it's definitely not full of honey anymore. And like, I should have come and done these checks earlier on. I'm a bit behind in this apiary here because it's a bit further away and I've just not had the time to come and look. And I kind of thought, well, you know, I'm not getting anything from this colony. It's got its appen our strip in. It's not been fed, but I know they had a lot of feed last time I checked. And yeah, we're still not seeing any brood anywhere. Another dead giveaway here is like the difference in color between the bees. You've got some dark bees, some light bees, and although they're not aggressive, you know, we could be down to kind of F2 Buckfast here. That's just a sign that they may have swarmed when you're seeing this kind of difference in color the way that you're seeing it here. It's a bit of a shame, this one. I thought I was going to be showing you, you know, how they've naturally set themselves up and where the brood nest is. And yeah, it's not gone to plan. This one, which is a shame, but we'll always show you the bits where they don't go right. So I'd expect to see some brood in some of these frames at some point. Nothing in there. I'm just looking down at the bottom and I'd expect to see loads of bees down at the bottom, but I'm not. And I know that this colony here had a mated queen. It's not a case of I've not checked. Like, there was a mated queen in here. She had mated. She was the next generation. They'd swarmed, but there was eggs. There was lots of capped worker brood. I was comfortable and I was happy with what I was seeing, and I'm no longer comfortable and I'm no longer happy with what I'm seeing. Which is a real shame. Right, let's get this top box off, place it over there. Fingers crossed we see something worthwhile in this bottom box. So really heavy, that top box. Plenty of stores, not got to worry about that. This does not look good. That's empty, empty, empty, empty, empty, empty. Little bit of bees over there. Not good. So I'm hoping, I'm just hoping that the queen's taking a break and we see a tiny little bit of brood over there. And what I definitely will do with this colony here, I can already see, The problem they've swarmed. Here we go. Dead giveaway. Look at that. They're pretty fresh. Not that long ago. That is really, really annoying. That was a big, strong, mega double brood colony that had sufficient space, and they have gone and swarmed on me. Almost certainly going to fail this colony over winter now. Late season swarm. Really annoying. Wow. You'll see I've got two apivar strips in there. I wouldn't have put two apivar strips in there if that wasn't full to the brim with brood. And they want to double brood. That's plenty of space. Very, very annoying. So I wonder where they went. That would've been a really big swarm to go somewhere. And I wonder when they went as well. That's the even bigger question, I guess, isn't it? How long ago did that colony swarm? Hardly any bees left in here. Oh, gutted. Let's have a look at that final frame, see if we can see anything over there. You never know, you might get a few eggs coming out, but I doubt it. Swarms at this time of the year, you know, if that's gone any time from middle of September onwards, No chance, absolutely no chance. And as soon as I saw those frames where the stores had gone, oh, I was thinking, when— that's— that is classic swarm. That is where they take away stores at that point in the year. But no, nothing, absolutely zilch. What a shame. So what am I going to do now? That was definitely not planned for this video. I've got probably a third or half a box of bees in total. They definitely don't need to be on a double brood configuration. I'm probably going to go through, see if I can find a queen. In here. If I find the queen, I'll kill the queen and I'll just shake them out and let them kind of go into some of the other boxes around here, make use of some of those bees. If I can't find the queen, I'll stick a big X on the front, and when it gets cold, I'll just close this one up. We'll recycle all the frames, we'll start again, and we'll put a new split in this colony in the spring.