It's been a few weeks since my last inspection. I was concerned at that time with my second hive as I did not find any eggs and only a few larger larve.
Today, it was confirmed that I have been queenless for a while. This is the hive I started to feed to see if it would get the queen laying as we thought is still may have a queen but in a dearth.
There were a bunch of queen cells at the bottom of some of the frames. I don't know if these were there before. I also found one queen cell on the top 1/3 and I don't remember seeing that in the past. It was not capped. Could not tell if there was a larva in it.
Did not find any eggs and most of the capped brood were drone cells.
I believe I did find the new queen although no signs of her laying yet. If she was indeed the queen, the other bees were not paying much attention to her. She was defiantely larger although not as large as I have seen before and she had that distinctive queen waggle.
There are still a good number of bees in this hive. They have been making honey like crazy it appears probably due to being queenless.
I now need to decide whether to get a queen or not. Africanized bees are a real issue and I agreed to be sure that I had a marked queen or replace if it is known that the current queen was not purchased.
So I guess I am answering my own question. I need to requeen this hive. Now the fun of find her again, destroying any other cells and introducing a new queen. Find a queen now may be more difficult too.
Any comments?
Can you see the queen?
(http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/774/20070904175655editsz1.th.jpg) (http://img205.imageshack.us/my.php?image=20070904175655editsz1.jpg)
>Can you see the queen?
No.
This is what I thought was the queen. She was bigger than the others and seem to have broader shoulder but did not have that as long as a adbomen as I have seen a couple of other times.
This is what I thought was the queen. Not sure though.
(http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/1337/queennl2.th.jpg) (http://img521.imageshack.us/my.php?image=queennl2.jpg)
That is a drone.The eyes of a drone wrap around more than a workers.The queen is generally much longer than the others.
Yep, that's a drone.
Matt, you could order a new queen and go out and scrape the queen cells out, let it sit a day and go back and make sure no more queen cells are being made and then introduce your queen. buy a marked queen so it will be easy to spot.
The bug eyes are the give away for drones. The blunt back end is another give away. A queen has a long tapered abdomen. Drones have a thick blunt abdomen.