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Chronological Thread  
  • From: mark powers <markapowers53 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: Peter Smith <psmith AT leaptec.com>, Orange County Beekeepers Association <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] TWO queens in one hive .... ?
  • Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2017 19:19:10 -0400

I like scenario #2 and Plan A.

Mark

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 29, 2017, at 9:06 AM, Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com> wrote:

Peter,

What a great puzzle!

First, two queens in one hive is not rare. The typical scenario is where the mother queen is superseded and the workers let both mother and daughter live concurrently for a while in the hive. I have seen this happen. After a while, the old mother queen will "disappear" (presumably dispatched by the workers). This isn't a bad thing, in fact it is GREAT because there would be no break in brood rearing during the supersedure event and we get twice as much brood during the overlap.

The puzzling bit in your case is having a queen above and also below the queen excluder. I can think of several scenarios where this could happen -- not suggesting any of this is what is going on in your case, just theoretical possibilities:

  1. A virgin queen, either from your hive (a supersedure daughter) or another one, went on a mating flight and returned to the upper entrance
  2. Before the queen excluder was in place, there were eggs/very young larvae in the comb that ended up above the excluder. Separated from the main nest, this creates a pseudo-queenless situation and the workers will often create a queen above the excluder.
  3. During an inspection, one of the queens in a mother/daughter pair (as described above) was on the queen excluder. When the excluder was removed and replaced, it was replaced upside down from the way it was originally and the 2nd queen ended up on top.
  4. There is a lot of academic discussion about whether workers will move eggs through an excluder, with unconvincing evidence of it occurring. I don't think that I believe it, but if true, the workers could have made a queen above the excluder with a moved egg.
  5. The excluder has some irregularly-spaced (too wide) bars or the queen is very undersized, and so the excluder isn't really excluding anybody.

I don't have an opinion on which of these is more likely or even if any of them apply to your situation. There are probably lots of other possibilities too.

As far as preparing for winter, Plan A would be to simply remove the queen excluder. The workers will decide which queen they want to keep. No problem at all.

Or you could find the extra queen and offer her for sale on the listserv.

If your dilemma is how to get the brood out of the upper box, then find the queen in the top, do something with her (sell, kill, use as a replacement, whatever), return the excluder and wait 24 days. All the brood (worker and drone) will have emerged by then.

Does this help?

Randall Austin




On 8/28/2017 8:48 AM, Peter Smith wrote:
MWHPR19MB0991DF5351A196487279857AC49E0 AT MWHPR19MB0991.namprd19.prod.outlook.com">

I have a very strong hive which is divided by a queen excluder. Above the excluder is an Imirie shim. (spacer with a small front entrance). I use this setup routinely in the summer to allow additional access mid-way up the hive and to prevent brood in the comb to be harvested.

 

What I have discovered is that there is a very strong brood pattern both above and below the excluder. I did not spot the queen(s) so far, but wanted to ask if anyone had experience of this?

 

My dilemma is how to prepare this hive for winter.

 

Peter Smith

 



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