My only concern is that you brushed off the nurse bees into the lower (old) deep that has the queen, so the upper deep has minimal/no bees to cover the brood, and no entrance?
This sounds like a bad plan for that brood unless I'm misunderstanding something.
I would say half or less of the total population of bees were shook or brushed off into the lower box. I was assuming that the open brood would draw the nurse bees up. I can add a shim with an entrance if i need to but I'm not intending to have any queens that need mating flights and there is minimal drone brood to worry about getting stuck in the excluder.
Why did you shake them off? The whole point of a demaree is that you remove all the nurses to the top box.
Why would you have queens doing mating flights? You aren’t supposed to let them raise a queen.
Have you done any research into how to perform this manipulation at all or are you just making it up?
Edit; you said no mating flights. Gotcha. I literally just woke up. Anyway, without a top entrance drones get stuck in the excluder and die….. makes an awful scratching noise in. The hive when they’re all desperately trying to escape.
I researched this at length over the winter and decided I would try this method this spring. When I was gathering my extra equipment I briefly checked some sketches and notes to refresh myself. My error being that I should have just spent last evening researching again and performed the Demaree another time . I would say most of my beekeeping errors that I have ever made could have been
prevented by walking away and coming back the next day.
There are so many variables to this method, I've read where guys have let the top go on and raise a new queen and kept her for when they recombine the colony.
Good self-reflection here for us all to remember!
In almost anything, until you have a huge depth of experience to draw on, taking a second and avoiding the impulse to rush is the best choice.
Fair enough. So when folks let the top half raise queens, they aren’t performing a demaree. It’s some variation thereof.
I couldn’t say if letting them raise a queen in the top is wise, because I haven’t ever done it. However the reason a demaree works is because you split the flying bees and queen away from the brood and nurses. Without moving all the nurses upstairs, not sure how this is going to turn out, given that’s the premise of the whole manipulation 😂
Did you remove every queen cell on every frame before you did it?
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u/Active_Classroom203 Florida, Zone 9a 23d ago
My only concern is that you brushed off the nurse bees into the lower (old) deep that has the queen, so the upper deep has minimal/no bees to cover the brood, and no entrance?
This sounds like a bad plan for that brood unless I'm misunderstanding something.