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ocba - Re: [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>, Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] No queen, no brood, ? swarm cells?
  • Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2015 13:45:52 -0400

Thanks Randall for your guidance and for urging patience. We checked the hive 2 weeks ago, and all the brood cells were cleaned out with no evidence of a queen or new eggs....but also no evidence of laying workers. So I figured our hypothetical new queen was off meeting some nice drones, and I waited.

I checked again today (4 weeks from my last email request) and saw many frames with all stages of brood, from brand new single eggs to capped worker brood. Whew! Glad I waited!  So it looks like we are in good shape for building the hive up before winter.

My new question is whether it would make sense to add a shallow super this late in the season. This is our first year keeping bees, and we have no drawn out comb in our supers. Our existing hive is 2 deep bodies that are full of brood and pollen and nectar and honey, but there are 3 (of 10) deep frames in each hive body that have not yet been built out. Lots of bees hang out on these frames, but for some reason they don't want to draw out the comb. Even though we won't take any honey from the late season nectar flow, I want to make sure that the bees have a place to store their nectar, and it seems to make sense that any drawn out comb we can get will give us a step up next spring when the tulip poplars flow again. Any suggestions about adding a shallow super with foundation only this late in the season? 

Thanks, Dan

Hey Dan,

Sounds like things are going fine. Our job at this point is to not mess things up... too badly.

1. Would it be best at this point to give the hive a chance to requeen itself or order a new queen?
    This is your choice, but since we aren't building up to a honey flow anytime soon, a leisurely natural requeening makes sense to me. Swarm queens are raised under the best conditions a hive has to offer so should be high quality.

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.
    A hive will swarm any time after the first queen cell is capped. A queen is in pupal stage for about 7 days. The new queen then needs to mature and strengthen enough to fly (a few days); go on several mating flights, weather permitting (several days/a week); internally process the sperm and begin laying (a few days); have time for the first eggs to hatch and grow big enough to easily see (5 or 6 days). Add a week to that to allow for things not going exactly as the textbooks suggest. So don't expect to see new brood for something like 5 weeks. This is where patience comes in. It is very easy to jump the gun and "do something" right before everything would have turned out fine if left alone (yes, I'm guilty!). Attempting to add a new queen when a hive is in the process of making their own can be frustrating and futile, as described <here>.

You are lucky that they swarmed after the honey flow ended. I don't give summer swarms a second thought. I don't lose my surplus honey and the stay-at-home bees should have time to rebuild before the fall flow since they already have comb. The flew-off swarm is probably doomed since they swarmed in a dearth and will have to build comb and put up stores quickly.

Randall

On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 11:08 AM, Daniel Kenan <dan.kenan AT gmail.com> wrote:
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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