Queen Castle Fail!

This week Jim and I inspect the queen castle and attempt to figure out what went wrong. In retrospect I think a walk away split would of been better. Have you had success with a Queen castle? Please share in the comments below!

[@eriknemily]

I have had success with taking frames with capped queen cells and making nucs out of them. I always shake a frame or two of nurse bees onto my nucs as well. Typically the mother hive will have lots of brood and a laying queen and will be able to add to the population quickly. It looked to me like your queen castle lacked enough bees to keep the brood warm.

[@BeeBoyBill]

You may be right on this! I learned a lot last year and I'm erring on the conservative side this year.

[@eriknemily]

I live on the oregon coast and we have mild, wet winters. I lost 5 of 6 hives this last year. I learned I need to combine weaker colonies in order get them through winter. I had one strong hive and they survived. One other was moderately strong and I was surprised they died off. The rest were single box (10 frame) hives and didn't stand a good chance of making it.

[@ctyank4946]

@@eriknemily ApiErik, How do you combine the weaker colonies effectively? Is it as simple as dropping frames into a large horizontal layen's and let the bees acclimate while surviving together? Or do you section each colony off while keeping them inside the same hive box?

[@eriknemily]

I've only done this once and it was with the common langstroth system. I took a piece of newspaper and put a couple of slits in it and then placed it on top of the stronger hive (no inner cover). I then took the weaker colony and placed it on top of the newspaper. Put the covers back on (no top entrance) and after a few days they will chew through the newspaper and merge. The newspaper gives them time to share pheromones and accept each other. Make sure the top hive has enough food to last a week. If not you will need to put in a feeder or add a frame of honey and pollen.

[@eriknemily]

On a layens system you could probably tape newspaper to an empty frame and use that to separate the two colonies. Almost like a paper following board between them. I haven't used a layens so I'm not real familiar with them. Love the concept though.