NZBF: No Brood
- Thread starter Stephen Horsley
- Start date
A little unusual but can happen.
What you really need to determine is if the hive is queenless, best way to do this is put a frame of brood with eggs or young larvae from another hive in it, and check a few days later to see if they are building queen cells.
What you really need to determine is if the hive is queenless, best way to do this is put a frame of brood with eggs or young larvae from another hive in it, and check a few days later to see if they are building queen cells.
Thanks Alastair. The hive has a resident queen. It was a healthy hive but got 30 varroa count with a wash 28 Feb and what I wrote in the dairy was 'a good amount of brood'. At that point the hive had a super with some honey alsoo. When I did the last check the super was empty of honey so I removed this to winter over and leave the 2 3/4 brood boxes. Good amount of pollen and nectar also present.
A 30 varroa count is getting up there, but will in itself not prevent the queen from laying eggs.
If you treated with one of the "organic" treatments, some of those can bother the queen and cause a temporary stop in egg laying.
Are the bees black / dark types?
If you treated with one of the "organic" treatments, some of those can bother the queen and cause a temporary stop in egg laying.
Are the bees black / dark types?
Haven't really noticed they are that dark. Sort of a mix if that's possible. Definitely not all dark. My other hive which has had a polystyrene cladding got decimated by wax moth and that was two brood boxes and three supers. Due to me not checking all the boxes and I think they came up from the bottom. The whole lot gone! I did manage to salvage a little honey and introduced a split from a friend which have melded nicely and the new queen laying.
Could I take a frame of brood from this hive to the other to spurn the queen on perhaps? There's not a great deal of brood though.
Could I take a frame of brood from this hive to the other to spurn the queen on perhaps? There's not a great deal of brood though.
Forgot to mention the hive with polystyrene cladding over has had virtually zero count of varroa for a year now. It did go through a long period of no queen and no brood which would have skewed the numbers.