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#Post#: 20--------------------------------------------------
Queen-less again
DIR By: Steve Vogel
Date: June 24, 2019, 9:24 am
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I have a colony that has now been Queen-less four times this
year. Early this Spring I found that the colony had swarmed.
The colony had made Queen cells, but none of them bore a viable
Queen. Or, the Queens that hatched killed each other. It is
also possible that the new virgin Queen didn't make it back to
the hive after her mating flight. So, I put a virgin Queen in
the colony. This Queen came from another colony. She was one
of the Queens that Anton and I watched emerge from another
colony. After about 2 weeks I got into the hive and found it
Queen-less. I decided to combine the Queen-less colony with
another colony that was weak, but had a Queen. This seemed to
work well. However, a few weeks later there was no Queen, no
eggs and very little uncapped brood. I decided to purchase a
mated Queen and put her in the hive, waited 4 days and released
her. I got into the hive Saturday and found it Queen-less
again, No eggs, very little uncapped brood and very little
capped brood. I'm planning on combining this colony with
another but I'm very confused as to why this particular colony
continues to be Queen-less.
Any ideas as to why this continues to happen? After combining
this colony with another, will this happen again? Will the
colony I combine it with be Queen-less in a week or two?
Your thoughts....
#Post#: 21--------------------------------------------------
Re: Queen-less again
DIR By: ValerieJ
Date: June 25, 2019, 1:04 pm
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As of Saturday, this could be my post. I am experiencing the
same thing. I plan to check hives again this week, focusing on
looking for eggs and brood.
#Post#: 24--------------------------------------------------
Re: Queen-less again
DIR By: Steve Vogel
Date: June 25, 2019, 1:55 pm
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I'm hearing from James that this seems to to happening to
several colonies this year. Especially with the Queens people
have purchased.
I got into the Queen-less hive about an hour ago and found
evidence of a "laying worker". I found Queen cups with anywhere
from 6-12 eggs in them.
I decided to combine this hive with another that is smaller. It
has a Queen that came from one of my other hives. I guess you
could call it a daughter Queen. She seems to be well mated but
the hive is smaller than the others for some reason. I used the
newspaper method and put the bottom box on top of the papers. I
left the upper box where the hive was so that the workers had
somewhere to return to. I'll put that box on top of the
combined hive tomorrow morning before the bees go out to forage.
I hope your colony makes it. What's your plan?
#Post#: 39--------------------------------------------------
Re: Queen-less again
DIR By: Steve Vogel
Date: July 2, 2019, 2:12 pm
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WOW
This worked better and faster than I thought it would. Today
(July 2) I got into the hive. I thought I'd be putting another
frame of uncapped brood in the hive but the bees have eaten
through all the newspaper and combined the two colonies nicely.
There are a total of 4 boxes. I went through the top three and
found absolutely no evidence of any laying workers. In fact,
while inspecting the areas where I saw several eggs laid inside
a Queen cell, the bees had cleaned out all the eggs the laying
worker bees laid. The only eggs I found were 1 egg to a cell.
We are now "Queen-right" with several frames of honey, eggs and
pollen.
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