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Bob Brown New Bee
Joined: 12 Mar 2014 Posts: 6 Location: Scottish Highlands
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Posted: Tue May 13, 2014 8:43 pm Post subject: will donating a comb of eggs knock my hive back |
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Hi folks, very new to all this - week 3 of having a hive( =
I have a freeing who seems to be queed and eggless and he has asked if I can donate a frame of eggs/brood so his bees can re queen.
my question is will this knock back my hive significantly ( I relise it will to some degree) or will it be fine?
any advice welcomed,
Loving having bees by the way!  |
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trekmate Golden Bee

Joined: 30 Nov 2009 Posts: 1137 Location: UK, North Yorkshire, Bentham
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 6:46 am Post subject: |
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Hi Bob. More info needed. How has your colony developed (how many combs? eggs? brood? stores?)? Was it a swarm, nuc, full colony?
The stronger the colony now, the less impact it will have. |
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zaunreiter Moderator Bee

Joined: 26 Nov 2007 Posts: 3097 Location: Germany, NorthWest
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 7:47 am Post subject: |
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You can cut out a piece of comb with some eggs, that is enough. You don't need a full comb to requeen. It looks like this:
That doesn't harm your hive. |
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Merinos Foraging Bee
Joined: 12 Sep 2011 Posts: 163 Location: Brussels, Belgium
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 1:30 pm Post subject: |
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I love this picture... |
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Bob Brown New Bee
Joined: 12 Mar 2014 Posts: 6 Location: Scottish Highlands
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 10:32 pm Post subject: |
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sorry should have gave more detail,
the hive was an already established national hive, the bees are meliffera meliffera, not hybrids so less prolific than most, we currently have about 8 of the 11 frames being "worked", pretty good amount of stores, not so much brood. We have just added a super to try to draw the brood out to the outer frames but that was only done at the weekend.
the plan for us this year is to try and get the colony big enough to split, so we have 2 hives as we are a bit vunerable at the moment with just one, this is another reson im concerned about giving away brood/eggs - but I am also keen to help.
I like the idea of just taking a small section - thanks for that.
cheers folks, |
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biobee Site Admin

Joined: 14 Jun 2007 Posts: 1063 Location: UK, England, S. Devon
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 11:33 pm Post subject: |
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Bob - I'm not quite clear here.
If your friend has A.m.m. and you give him a comb of something else, they will raise a queen from your stock, which will dilute the blood line.
If you are trying to increase your stocks of A.m.m., then you need to take eggs & larvae from his hive and raise it in yours - but then you have the problem of how to ensure they mate with A.m.m. drones...
It would help if you could explain your situation and intention a little more. |
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Bob Brown New Bee
Joined: 12 Mar 2014 Posts: 6 Location: Scottish Highlands
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Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 12:04 am Post subject: |
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biobee wrote: | Bob - I'm not quite clear here.
If your friend has A.m.m. and you give him a comb of something else, they will raise a queen from your stock, which will dilute the blood line.
If you are trying to increase your stocks of A.m.m., then you need to take eggs & larvae from his hive and raise it in yours - but then you have the problem of how to ensure they mate with A.m.m. drones...
It would help if you could explain your situation and intention a little more. |
Ok,
We have a hive of A.m.m and so dose my friend (same village) we have no hybrid bees for at least 20 miles and the person we got the bees from has sadly had to give them up and her breeding project due to developing severe reaction to stings now Anafalaxis (They are also no longer available to quiz/advise) there remaining 6 hives are still in the village but I think they are being moved very soon, if not already gone, and there is one other family in the village with A.m.m.
So current situation is we have 1 hive, another family has 1 hive and my mate has 1 hive all of A.m.m.
He seems to be Queen less and is looking for eggs to re queen (I don't understand why his bees didn't already do this?)
So in short there is not a problem with them mating with A.m.m. as that is all that we have in village.
I am a bit worried about the gene pool already being to weak as suhrrly at some point we are going to have to bring in a A.m.m. Queen from somewhere else to add to the gene pool? |
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