Bees beware I'm Experimenting

[Southern Drone]

Saturday April 24th. I purchased 2 Splits consisting of 5 frames each which had 3 brood frames and 2 frames of honey and pollen; plus a partial split of 2 frames of a small amount of brood and 1 frame of honey and pollen I put in a nuc box. After bringing them home I looked into them the day after. They were building comb on the new foundation I had for them. The one in the middle however wasn't so eager to build comb as fast. I started thinking; maybe the hive in the middle had a queen that was spent and not so inclined to lay anymore eggs, for there weren't any eggs in the comb just larva. The smaller 3 frame split was doing better than the 5
frame split in the middle. Feeling studious or rather experimental, I took an obvervation hive with a frame of medium and a frame of deep foundation and put queen into it. The deep foundation had many bees from her hive on it and perhaps a 2 millimeters of comb extended from the foundation; not at all like the two end hives with the frames nearly filled out totally on one side. Knowing that she will not lay any eggs in it untill some comb be built, I begain to worry if it would even survive. Even with small amount of bees in the hive they managed to build it out far enough to put pollin in it which was the first day of a honey flow around here in my neck of the woods. Robbers ate holes in the wax where the pollin was so I inverted a bee escape and put in the entrance hopeing to capture and hold hostages to make up a hive of driffters. Can this be done?

[Brian D. Bray]

With such a small batch of bees it would be wise to reduce the entrance to about 1/2-1 inch wide until it can build up.  the smaller entrance they have to defend to keep out pouchers the more resources they can put to home improvement.  Robbers can steal a small struggling hive into oblivian.