Natural Beekeeping International Forum

[diipendra]

please help!!!
this is my first year ...i have 2 top bar hives, that i started on march 30th
I had an issue with a queen in one of "the best looking hive" , so replaced it. There are now new eggs and lots of honey and pollen but there is very rare activity in or out of the hive. Should i be worried about the lack of activity? It is very different from the other hive.
Thanks...

[Barbara]

Hi and welcome

I think a bit more information would be useful.

Were they started from packages?

Did you feed them and how much?

What was the issue you had with the queen in "the best looking hive" (do you mean the strongest hive?) and when did you replace her.

When you say rare activity, do you mean one bee every half hour or just less active than the other. Roughly how many bees a minute?

Could there be something blocking the entrance.... a collapsed comb for instance?

You say that there are now eggs so that is good but are there still plenty of bees to look after them. If there has been a few weeks lull between the failure of the old queen and the acquisition of the new one, you will have lost quite a few bees during that time through natural wear and tear that will not have been replaced and if there was no brood from the old queen, then there will be no nurse bees now to look after the developing brood, so foragers will have to do it which means they won't be foraging, hence you won't see them at the entrance. It could be that the older bees will die before there are enough new bees to take over, so it very much depends on what the problem with the old queen was and when you got the new one. It might help to swap the hives over so that foragers from the other hive return to the quiet hive and boost their numbers.

Sorry, it's difficult to guess what is happening without more info.

[trekmate]

Knowing your location and therefore climate/season would be a benefit to us too!

You could register with the site and add that information to your profile. You'll get a lot of help if we have the right information about you and your problems!

... and welcome!