From page 18
BEEKEEPING SOCIAL MEDIA
Place the super on a new
the spring and before the
swarming season or ahead of
a honey flow, and here's how
to do it.
Select a good strong working
hive with a good force of
worker bees with one super
chamber,
Drive the bees down through
the super to make sure that
the queen is below in the
brood chamber,
Place a good quality queen
excluder over the brood
chamber and below the
super. The worker and house
bees will return to the super.
Wait two days.
Prepare two shallow frames,
each with one top wire, trim a
shallow sheet of foundation
wax to arrange four or five
large points and attach into
the top groove of the top bar
of the frame and secure to the
one top wire.
Remove the super, the lid and
queen excluder as one unit
and place on a board
alongside the brood chamber.
In this way all the bees are in
the super and are under
control, to relieve the
beekeeper of having to
contend with these bees.
Remove the outer frame from
each side of the brood nest,
slide the remaining frames to
the sides to create the space
in the centre of the brood
nest and place the two
shallow frames with the
foundation prepared as above
into the space created.
Replace the queen excluder
and the super of bees. The
bees in the brood chamber
will draw out the foundation
and the queen will lay eggs in
these newly prepared frames.
After five days remove the
super as before and check the
new frames for eggs and
possibly one day old larva. If
not yet laid, check again after
a further two days until eggs
appear in the cells.
Remove the brood chamber
to another position about 3m
away and face it in an
opposite direction.
floor and set in the same
position and direction as the
previous brood chamber. The
worker force will return to this
original position.
Remove the two shallow
frames laid with eggs and
place in the centre of the
super chamber. Work gently
not to dislodge the bees on
these frames as these are
nurse bees that will attend to
the young hatching larva. This
super will now be crammed
with bees and the worker
force, so place a second
empty super over this super
to relieve the congestion.
This unit of bees is queenless,
and the bees will immediately
set about building queen cells
to draw queens from the very
young larva.
After ten days check for
queen cells. There could be
up to eight or ten queen cells
on these two frames, all
capped.
These cells will hatch after a
further three days. Queens
hatch 13 days after the eggs
are laid.
Now to deal with these
queen cells.
Select the hives that are to
receive a new queen, drive
the bees down out of the
super and place a queen
excluder over the brood
chamber as before.
Cut the comb on to which
the queen cell was built and
jamb the chunk of comb
carrying the queen cell
between two frames in the
centre of the super chamber.
Be very careful not to bump
this cell that could injure the
entombed queen.
The bees will accept this cell
but if the old queen gains
access to this cell she will
destroy it.
The cell will hatch and release
the new queen into the super
chamber above the queen
excluder.
Remove the super and
attached queen excluder,
place on a board as before.
Continued on page 20
19
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