ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers
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- From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
- To: Jim Evans <jevans20 AT gmail.com>, Orange Beekeepers <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: Re: [ocba] New hive - supercedure cells
- Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 15:20:30 -0400
Jim,
An article here discusses a variant of your situation, which is very common. However in your specific case, you haven't had enough time from April 5th to today for your bees to have raised a new queen and have her emerge. My guess is that the package did not get off to a successfully start with a good laying queen, for any number of reasons. Since you have one good hive to compare with and so you know what brood looks like, I don't doubt your assessment of the situation. If the queen cells are capped, I would open one or two of them to see if anything is inside -- my guess is that there isn't. I think those cells are just wishful thinking on the part of desperate bees. I've seen that before in my own hives. Others may have other opinions but it does sound like your hive is truly queenless and you should remedy that ASAP. Normally I would suggest taking a frame of very young brood from the good hive and letting the queenless hive raise their own queen, but since it has been almost 3 weeks already without any new young bees, I don't think the hive can wait another month for reinforcements to arrive via a full brood cycle. So I would pay $25 or so for a store-bought queen so she can start laying ASAP. Just make sure you don't have laying workers before you try to install her, but it sounds like you don't (yet). An alternative would be to combine this hive with your good hive for now and maybe later make a mini-split to get back to 2 hives. No guarantees, but you seem to have observed carefully and given this considerable thought, and it seems your initial conclusion is the same as mine. Randall Austin On 4/20/2014 2:12 PM, Jim Evans wrote: CAPXd3jVS6c3z0Lhx4JqM849FZS+fXiyCQgE18NpUaHDJMLkTJQ AT mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> |
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[ocba] New hive - supercedure cells,
Jim Evans, 04/20/2014
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Re: [ocba] New hive - supercedure cells,
Randall Austin, 04/20/2014
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Re: [ocba] New hive - supercedure cells,
Jim Evans, 04/20/2014
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Re: [ocba] New hive - supercedure cells,
Randall Austin, 04/20/2014
- Re: [ocba] New hive - supercedure cells, Jim Evans, 04/20/2014
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[ocba] queen sources now?,
chloe palenchar, 04/22/2014
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Re: [ocba] queen sources now?,
Jim Musson, 04/22/2014
- Re: [ocba] queen sources now?, Randall Austin, 04/22/2014
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Re: [ocba] queen sources now?,
Jim Musson, 04/22/2014
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Re: [ocba] New hive - supercedure cells,
Randall Austin, 04/20/2014
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Re: [ocba] New hive - supercedure cells,
Jim Evans, 04/20/2014
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Re: [ocba] New hive - supercedure cells,
Randall Austin, 04/20/2014
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