One of my nucs has taken exception to the thymol crystals treatment and I found a clump of bees under the roof when I was checking the box feeder I put on yesterday. I have moved the the bees from the roof and left the roof off but there was still a clump of bees on the front of the hive even after I had smoked them down. However, some were taking the feed.
Normans allotment hive next to the German queen didn't settle well with their new queen in the summer and swarmed (or did they build up too fast for me and got tight for space?). I took out the swarm queen cell and made a nuc up with it (that nuc is one of the few left in a nuc box and is now in Old Costessy). I then put in a frame from the German queen and raised some queen cells from her. The first German queen Norman's bees raised they didn't like and they started raising more queens cells (as did the bees in the North Walsham swarm box that also had a German queen cell). I took out the queen from Norman's box and put her in a nuc box (I watched that fail to fight off the wasps and then get robbed out. It all happened so fast there wasn't anything I could do about it) and I left Norman's bees to get on with it thinking it was late in the year to be raising queens. Back link
Today was my first inspection to see how they are getting on. They have a laying queen (although I didn't see her) and are a small but seemingly happy colony. I gave them a completely capped frame of honey from Bill's greengage hive, closed them up and put a block of fondant on. I didn't treat them with thymol. Who knows they may just make it through the winter.
I did the opposite with the North Walsham's bees and their German queen cell. I left the queen in but took the queen cells out and put those in a nuc box. The queen survives but the bees tore down one of the queen cells within days of me putting it in the nuc box (I wanted to give a queen cell to the Greengage swarm who had lost theirs). The other cell came to nothing.
I think nuc boxes are only really viable for breeding queens in middle of the season when conditions are optimum.
Midnight's colony seems to be still going strong after their thymol treatment. I'm feeding them at the moment with a bucket feeder and plan to take them out to Ringland soon.
I put mouse guards on the three Bluebell Road hives today they all still have syrup in their buckets.
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