Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

ocba - [ocba] Tricky problem with a virgin queen

ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Jacquelyn Clymore <jacquelynclymore AT yahoo.com>
  • To: Bee List <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [ocba] Tricky problem with a virgin queen
  • Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2014 07:10:33 -0700 (PDT)

I'm a first year beekeeper. Installed 2 packages 4/19; one is doing very well. The other is becoming a mystery.
It's first queen apparently failed: got out of her queen box but no eggs ensued. I purchased a second queen which they failed to release after three days so I freed her and she promptly shot out and away, never to return (I saw her go). I purchased a third queen and now, over two weeks later there are a few drone cells, no worker cells and the total population is very small. I had a more experienced beekeeper over yesterday (thank you Mike!) who actually found the queen in the hive! (I had assumed she was gone, couldn't find her.)

She appears to be a virgin queen, with a fairly small abdomen. She is clearly not laying. So what do I do? I really can't keep buying new queens, it is getting expensive.

-Do a split and add a frame or two of brood to my weak hive? which won't give them a new queen presumably.
-Switch the hives' places in an attempt to trick the bees to return to the wrong hive? Would a queen develop?
-Combine them into one mega-hive and hope they can adjust if I do that, and I would need to squish the poor-performing queen, right?

Other thoughts?? I'm pretty lost on this one!
Thanks for thinking,

Jacquelyn Clymore




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page