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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: thrhodes AT hotmail.com
  • To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [ocba] Missing queen
  • Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 14:30:48 -0500

I checked my three hives at the end of February when we had a couple warm days.  As expected, one hive was completely dead as evidenced by the carnage from robbing out front. One hive looked really good and strong with a good brood pattern and sufficient resources. I flipped the brood box to the bottom and then looked at the third hive.  When I opened up the hive and started looking, I immediately knew something was wrong.  I have what to me looks like a classic laying worker situation.  The "brood" is spotty, all drone in length, no apparent queen cells, no brood pattern characteristic of the good hive, and no queen that I could see.  I took what frames of honey were left in the dead hive and put it in this one.  Perhaps throwing good resources at a lost cause, but then I wasn't sure since I'd never had this happen before.

Just to be sure, I gave it some time and rechecked today.  No change for the better and if anything that laying worker has really kicked it up.  Resources are down, but there are still a good amount of worker bees and some resources left.  

At this point, what's the best option?  In an active laying worker situation, would introducing a queen work if I can get one or are they just likely to kill it off.  I'm leaning toward just taking a frame or two of brood from my other hive and seeing if they will draw out some queen cells from it and hopefully get queen-right.  I could also briefly newspaper combine the two hives into one as well and split later, but if there is any chance I can save it separately, that would be ideal. Thoughts?

Thanks,
Haywood



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