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  • From: Jim Evans <jevans20 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: Orange Beekeepers <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] New hive - supercedure cells
  • Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 15:38:04 -0400

Randall,

The requeen option seems the best for this rookie beekeeper. Any suggestions on where to purchase a new queen?  As of Friday, Baileys had not identified a source. 

I will open one of the supercedure cells before introducing a new queen. 

Thank you for the advice and suggestions. 

Jim Evans 
jevans20 AT gmail.com
919-949-7362 (mobile)

On Apr 20, 2014, at 3:20 PM, Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com> wrote:

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">
I'm a new beekeeper and installed two packages on April 5.  The hives have been fed regularly and bees are very active.

One hive is doing great.  Lots of honey stores, brood, and larvae.  The queen was easy to find. 

The other hive has honey stores but no brood cells. The bees are building comb and storing food.  It does have 5-6 supercedure cells.  It seems odd to have supercedure cells and no brood?  My bee mentor checked and agreed that there is no brood.

Should I wait for a new queen to emerge and mated i.e. do nothing (other than continue feeding)?

Or, should I seek out and purchase a new queen for this hive? 

I could move brood from the "good" hive into the weaker hive, but without a queen, not sure this makes sense. 

Advice appreciated. 

Jim Evans
jevans20 AT gmail.com
919-949-7362
 


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