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  • From: John Rintoul <beecd AT icloud.com>
  • To: Orange County Beekeepers Association <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [ocba] Seeking guidance on Queen issues
  • Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2015 16:28:17 -0400

I'm looking for a little guidance.

I went into my #2 hive today. There was no brood, no eggs, no visible queen.
I was in the hive 8 days ago and there were small amounts of brood then and
an open supercedure cell. There were more bees today than there were last
week. There are now 2 open supercedure cells. The one from last week and a
new one.

So my read is that I probably have a virgin queen rather than no queen. And a
break in the brood cycle. I can live with that. What I don't want is the
possibility of a laying worker taking up the challenge in the event that
there is no queen, virgin or otherwise. My questions are:
1) is my logic on track?
2) how long do I wait before a laying worker might decide to try her luck?

I started a nuc from a batch of swarm cells a couple of weeks back. The nuc
now has open and capped brood and a queen that I saw today. So I have a spare
queen that I could easily drop into Hive 2. But it if Hive 2 already has a
queen who just hasn't started laying yet then I would be wasting a queen.

All advice, suggestions and comments are welcome. Thanks in advance.

John Rintoul
(919) 414-4071



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