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  • A queenless colony?

  • Beginners forum, ask beekeeping related questions and get help from other experienced beekeepers. Please use the Search Feature please to avoid duplicated threads
Beginners forum, ask beekeeping related questions and get help from other experienced beekeepers. Please use the Search Feature please to avoid duplicated threads
 #8176  by Andy_mac
 10 Jul 2020, 20:56
Hi everyone, I'm a new beekeeper this year, just finished my introductory course before lockdown kicked in.
I got a nuc, installed it into a hive and everything was going rosy.
I opened the hive one weekend, saw queen cells, grabbed the recent edition of BeeCraft and performed a nucleus split.
I opened the hive after 3 weeks and the queen cell was still sealed. I read up on the forum that I should take a look in the cell incase the bees had resealed it. That evening I saw a swarm high in a tree near the apiary which departed. I left the hive for another week and had no eggs so put a frame of eggs and unsealed brood in. After 4 days, no queencells, just loads of sealed brood and a few larvae. I was all ready to reunite this weekend, but I'm not sure what to do.

Any advice gratefully received...
 #8177  by Patrick
 10 Jul 2020, 22:48
Hi Andy and welcome.

So.. if I have got this right a month ago you had queen cells and put the old queen in a nuc. You reduced to one and after 3 weeks still no open ended cell, so you opened it and discovered what??

A swarm appeared locally - might have been something to do with you or not. You put in a test frame (good call) from your nuc and they haven’t raised any more queen cells from it. Your original queen is still in the nuc and you are understandably unsure what to do next. Is that about right?

Doesn’t sound you have done much wrong tbh. Did you find a dead pupa in queen cell or was it empty? Unless they have developed laying workers (multiple eggs in any cells?) the test frame response suggests there is a new queen wandering about, laying or not. No offence intended but how good are you at spotting eggs? I reckon I am ok but often only find new queens laying by noticing brood that could only have been present as eggs when I last looked.

Uniting in this position is a bit of a gamble. You have one known viable queen and a bit of an unknown situation in the other. Uniting two possibly queenright colonies is risky. I would still leave be a while longer. There is plenty of the year in hand and your insurance nuc is still just that.

Did you buy or were given the nuc? If purchased I would ask the nuc seller the age of the queen. If it was a last or this year new queen, it is surprising (but not unheard of ) it tried to swarm so soon. If it was made up with an older queen or had been a swarm, I would not want to have paid very much. How many queen cells were there? It is just possible they were actually superseding not swarming, but even so I would still likely have done what you did.


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 #8178  by AdamD
 11 Jul 2020, 09:03
It is so easy to miss queencells, and they can be produced even after the books say that the colony should make no more. If we assume that the swarm was yours, it would be with a virgin queen as your laying queen is nearby. A colony will not swarm leaving a colony without a queen /queencell which would indicate that there is a virgin queen present - and you test frame indicated such (unless you have laying workers as Patrick says). A queen needs 18 - 20 degrees and a none-too-windy day for mating. (I am an avid weather-watcher and I will say to my wife that it's a good mating day - I'll leave you to decide what answer she gives me!). Once the queen has that and she goes out on her nuptual flight(s) it's a few days before she starts to lay.

If you want to check the colony, that's OK from my experience (the books generally say don't do it) but don't do it on a good weather day between 10am and 7 pm in case the queen is out a-mating; she'll possibly get confused and not return. If you see polished cells where you would expect to see brood - in the middle of the brood box; then there's a good chance that the queen is there. If the bees are calm and not buzzy, again that's a fair indication that all is well - although it takes experience to recognise this (and some bees don't exhibit this trait so cleanly as I have described).
Welcome to the forum from me too.
 #8179  by Patrick
 11 Jul 2020, 10:54
Good advice from Adam.

Just a thought for next year. In my experience, taking a nuc with the old queen is a better insurance measure than as swarm prevention. We are often a bit parsimonious about the amount of frames removed (trying to have our cake and eat it?!) if kept in the same apiary some bees fly “home” and the remaining capped brood in the hive continurs to hatch at a thousand plus a day, quickly making up the difference. Thus if the weather remains favourable and more than one cell is available they often still leg it. I echo Adam’s sentiment about having a look to check on progress. I think nowadays leaving a month before checking is daft. Great if all goes to plan but otherwise a gamble.
 #8180  by Liam
 11 Jul 2020, 12:10
So the Original hive had just one queencell left and you removed the old queen and put her in a nuc?. Sometimes they can in-tomb a worker bee. When I thinned out my queen cells I noticed one didn’t hatch after 16 days and it was a worker inside. For some reference: my virgin queen hatched on the 13th of June and started laying 5th July. I had presumed it was queenless, they were honey bound by this point so that might have slowed her up. I’m no expert and many books say queens will be laying by a certain date but my bees don’t read books. They did try to supercede her, I added more drawn out frames and they seem happy now.
 #8183  by NigelP
 11 Jul 2020, 13:51
Andy_mac wrote:
10 Jul 2020, 20:56
put a frame of eggs and unsealed brood in. After 4 days, no queencells, just loads of sealed brood and a few larvae. I was all ready to reunite this weekend, but I'm not sure what to do.

Any advice gratefully received...
If they are not drawing queen cells on a test frame it strongly suggest that you have a queen of some description in there. Whether she is mated or not will become obvious over the next few weeks. They can take quite a few weeks to start laying.
Not sure how close together you hive and nuc are. But if they are next to each other I would upgrade the nuc to a full hive and then move the other hive away. This will bleed off the flying bees into your Nuc/hive and strengthen it.
Then after a week or so downgrade the queenless hive to a nuc....less bees means it will be easier to find any queen present. I've just done exactly that with a hive that has a queen but she isn't laying after 6 weeks......
 #8209  by Andy_mac
 12 Jul 2020, 19:50
Thanks for the warm welcome and all of the advice!

Patrick - When I went back to check the queen cell it was empty. You're right to question my egg spotting abilities :-) , I can see eggs in the nuc (in full sun), but the hive is in dappled shade with older frames in, so it is harder to spot them in there. I generally look for larvae as they're easier to spot
Adam D - I checked the hive this week, but luckily it wasn't great weather ( the usual for here ). The bees are calmer than they were, and I did see quite a few bee behinds as their heads were in the comb, so fingers crossed.
Liam - I've not heard about being "honey bound" before - there's a lot of honey in the frames, so thats a definite possibility.
Nigel P - I separated the hive and nuc by about 40 yards otherwise I'd do that. The nuc's doing well at the moment, I inspected it today and had trouble seeing the brood in frames for the amount of bees in there!

The outside frames of the hive are still to be drawn. If the bees are honey bound, would you recommend me moving them closer into the middle of the hive?

I left the hive alone this weekend after reading the responses, I'll take a peek next weekend and see whats going on.
 #8211  by Patrick
 12 Jul 2020, 23:16
Empty queen cell means that a virgin emerged from cell. No test frame queen cells raised and calm temperament mean you definitely have something going on. Fingers crossed...
 #8309  by Andy_mac
 22 Jul 2020, 16:39
Hi All,
An update (and more questions..)
I checked the hive at the weekend and didn't see a queen, any eggs or larve.
The weathers not been that great so I'm wondering if she's missed her mating window..
My plan is to reinspect early next week (rain permitting) and if I don't see any eggs or larvae to unite the hive and nuc.

Now for the questions :-)
  1. Should I move another frame of brood & eggs from the nuc to test for queencells, or is that just a 'waste' at this point?
  2. I moved the nuc 50 metres away from the hive (which is in a better location). Should I move an empty hive to where the nuc is and bring the queenless hive to the nuc, or unite at the hive, potentially losing the nuc's flying bees?
  3. It I've got a virgin queen I'm worried that I may not be able to identify her. Is there an easy way to 'trap' the queen or get her to identify herself (shaking out the bees was the only thing I could think of?)
  4. Once the colonies are united, should I condense them into one brood box or double brood over winter?
Thanks for taking the time to read.
 #8310  by NigelP
 22 Jul 2020, 17:41
I would certainly add another test frame. If they don't draw any queen cells then most likely you have a virgin in there. If they do draw queen cells.....don't do anything. At best it will delay laying workers from appearing

Your problem with any unite can be the presence of a virgin (which your next test frame should tell you).
Apart from taking a good long examination of the nuc one way I know of for isolating the queen requires 2 brood boxes. Place a couple of frames of foundation in the bottom box. Shake all your bees from frames of the nuc into the bottom box and put a queen excluder over this. Add the empty frames above this....good to have some brood here (your test frame) to draw most of the bee up. Next day you safely unite your top box. And examine bottom box for queen. I did this earlier this year and despite my best efforts still couldn't find the queen....so I simply threw them out to take their chances....about 3 miles away ....last thing I wanted was an unmated virgin entering a thriving hive and causing chaos. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.