Suffolk bees - a mistake?

Suffolk bees - a mistake?

I made a trip out to my bees in Suffolk today for the second time this year. My first visit this year was to assess my winter losses and there was one failed hive there. That was on February 16th. I didn't write much about it at the time as I had made a quick visit to 28 hives that day and couldn't write about them all.

The hive that had failed was a 2008 queen - parent Bill's bees - that I took out there at the start of the season. Bill's hive made a lot of rape honey and then swarmed. The queen that went into the winter was one of two from that original swarmed 'Bill's' hive.

On inspection in February the bees were dead without any real explanation as to why. There was plenty of food in the brood box.

Of the other two hives one was doing really well with an old queen and the other (the second of Bill offspring) was hanging on in there. I gave both hives a quick inspection and a full bucket of feed each.

The hive with old queen took me a little by surprise with the number of bees in the brood box and I closed it down quickly as this was not supposed to be an inspection and I didn't have my smoker with me (big mistake!). I left it with a full brood box of bees, a crown board on top, (that I couldn't move) two supers above that and the bucket of feed on a second crown board at the top. The queen excluder was left out and I think now that was another fatal mistake.

The bees apparently did get up through the center hole in the crown board and did get the feed as the bucket (unlike the other hive) was completely empty. The brood box was still full of bees but apart from a few capped drone cells and couple of uncapped odd cells of drone brood here and there there were no cells or eggs.

It seems the queen may be missing she must have been laying after I left as that was over a month ago and that is enough time for all eggs including drones to be hatched out since then. Did she get taken up above the crown board into the empty supper frames and perish there? I don't know. But if I had put the queen excluder on (even if was above the crown board as it would have been) I would at least now be sure that she hadn't perished in the supers.

I suppose it is possible that she is there but not laying as the old Queen at Poswick.

The other hive was small and weak in comparrison but the queen was there (small and dark). I took out a frame that had a few eggs and a small patch of brood and put the frame in the other hive. I closed up I dropped the feeder bucket down to the brood box taking off the supers.

I hope they can build up their numbers and was tempted to unight the two hives there and then.