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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers
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- From: Zac Morris <zac AT zacwolf.com>
- To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: [ocba] Requeening question
- Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2013 13:15:30 -0400
Hey gang. This last fall was my first harvest, but I had to be out of town for most of Sept/October. I checked the hive before I left and had a goodly amount of honey (two sups). When I got back to do the harvest, I noticed that much of the honey in the top sup was gone, and I noticed that the hive seemed a bit weakened (had a few hive beetles that they were running, but no larva). I'm guessing that they had swarmed while I was away?
I harvested the top sup, and let the hive winter with the two deeps.
I inspected the hive two weeks ago, and I only saw one small hive beetle, but I went ahead and installed a few traps. It wasn't the warmest day, so I didn't open the entire hive (i.e. I didn't look for a queen).
I decided to requeen so picked up a queen yesterday and today when I went to requeen, I inspected the hive, and I found an open queen cell (mid-frame) (and no beetles in the traps). I had a goodly number of drones (not enough to warrant a concern of workers laying), and that made finding the queen very difficult. I honestly can't say whether I found her, or a drone. :-/
I installed the new queen in a (closed) requeening frame, and closed up the hive.
A few questions:
How long should I wait to let the new queen out? (Was thinking 2-days, Sunday?)
When I go to inspect the hive, is there any behavior that I should look for that would say that I didn't get the old queen (possibly a virgin). If I see any such behavior should I try finding her again, and then wait longer on opening the new queen's frame?
If I still miss the "old" queen, will the two queens just "fight it out", or am I doing real harm by letting them "sort it out themselves"?
THANKS!
-Zac
-
[ocba] Requeening question,
Zac Morris, 04/05/2013
- Re: [ocba] Requeening question, Todd Walker, 04/05/2013
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