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Chronological Thread  
  • From: mark powers <markapowers53 AT gmail.com>
  • To: "Starks, Walter" <Walter.Starks AT facilities.unc.edu>
  • Cc: Bee List <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Tricky problem with a virgin queen
  • Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2014 15:15:28 -0400

I believe Jacquelyn said that queen has been in the hive about 17-18 days already.  I was worried that it would take too long to make a queen from eggs.


On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 3:12 PM, Starks, Walter <Walter.Starks AT facilities.unc.edu> wrote:
Is it possible that the virgin queen just  isn't old enough to have taken her mating flights yet?

Another possibility would be to add a frame with eggs to the hive and give the workers a chance to mature a new queen. This would probably involve adding more frames with capped brood later on to help maintain the hive until she starts laying though. Might be easier just to do the news paper combine.

______

Walter Starks




Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 9, 2014, at 3:01 PM, "mark powers" <markapowers53 AT gmail.com> wrote:

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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