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Chronological Thread  
  • From: mark powers <markapowers53 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Jacquelyn Clymore <jacquelynclymore AT yahoo.com>
  • Cc: Bee List <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Tricky problem with a virgin queen
  • Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2014 15:00:17 -0400

I looked at the hives with Jacquelyn.  The weak hive is very weak with less than 3 frames of bees,  only a few drone brood cells and a smallish (presumably unmated) queen. 
 
These were my thoughts:
 
To keep this hive, it needs bees and a new (mated) queen ready to lay right away.  It may be chancy.  To add bees we discussed transferring brood  (for young bees) from her strong hive and a position swap of colonies (to get more foragers).
 
Or, a newspaper combination after eliminating the weak hive queen, to make one strong hive.
 
Mark
 


On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 10:10 AM, Jacquelyn Clymore via ocba <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:
I'm a first year beekeeper. Installed 2 packages 4/19; one is doing very well. The other is becoming a mystery.
It's first queen apparently failed: got out of her queen box but no eggs ensued. I purchased a second queen which they failed to release after three days so I freed her and she promptly shot out and away, never to return (I saw her go). I purchased a third queen and now, over two weeks later there are a few drone cells, no worker cells and the total population is very small. I had a more experienced beekeeper over yesterday (thank you Mike!) who actually found the queen in the hive! (I had assumed she was gone, couldn't find her.)

She appears to be a virgin queen, with a fairly small abdomen. She is clearly not laying. So what do I do? I really can't keep buying new queens, it is getting expensive.

-Do a split and add a frame or two of brood to my weak hive? which won't give them a new queen presumably.
-Switch the hives' places in an attempt to trick the bees to return to the wrong hive? Would a queen develop?
-Combine them into one mega-hive and hope they can adjust if I do that, and I would need to squish the poor-performing queen, right?

Other thoughts?? I'm pretty lost on this one!
Thanks for thinking,

Jacquelyn Clymore


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