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ocba - [ocba] No queen, no brood, ? swarm cells?

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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Daniel Kenan <dan.kenan AT gmail.com>
  • To: ocba <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [ocba] No queen, no brood, ? swarm cells?
  • Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2015 11:08:34 -0400

This is our first season keeping bees. I've been checking them every 2-3 weeks, and marveling at what a great queen we had, always lots of eggs and brood in a tight pattern. Also lots of burr comb in middle frames between top and bottom large hive bodies that I dutifully cleaned out at every inspection. In the evenings of early July, the bees would form a massive beard on the front of the hive. A few days ago the beard looked significantly smaller. I inspected the hive yesterday for the first time in 3 weeks and was shocked to find no eggs or larvae and only a few capped brood cells...mostly drones. There was plenty of nectar, honey and pollen. The place where the "burr comb" had been built in the center of the hive, between top and bottom hive body, now looked suspiciously like swarm cells. Some of the cells had been disrupted and had nearly mature pupae. Other cells looked intact. The remaining bees are behaving normally, and there is no evidence of laying workers.

Based on these observations, I assume that our original queen swarmed and the swarm cells will provide a replacement queen. What I am a bit surprised about is that virtually all of the brood cells are empty. I would think that the queen would normally continue laying eggs until the day she swarms.

My questions are:

1. Would it be best at this point to give the hive a chance to requeen itself or order a new queen?

2. Given that the swarm cell pupae appear almost mature, what should be the time frame before my next check for evidence of a new queen and/or eggs? I feel like I should minimize additional disturbances, but I want to know as soon as possible if I need to buy a queen.

3. How late in the season can we purchase and successfully requeen if we need to?

4. Why would a seemingly successful first year hive swarm? Both lower and upper hive bodies have at least 3 empty frames with no comb built out. I was reluctant to add a super due to the extra space for small hive beetles to hang out. There were a lot more hive beetles at yesterday's inspection, after the apparent swarm.

Thanks for input!

Dan



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