Hello, this is my first post.
I put my bees in my top bar hives today. The first hive went great,however, when doing the second one, the plug fell into the queen cage and the queen flew out.
The plug seemed to be 2/3's of the way inside and crooked.
It happened so fast that I didn't even realize that she flew off.
I stood still and watched for her, but I didn't see her.
I don't know what to do, just assume that she'll come back and enter the hive, or assume that she is gone. Will they follow her, or make a new queen? Should I order a new one? If I did, would they accept her , and what would happen if the queen is already in the hive.
I don't know how to tell if she comes back or is in there.
Shucks! Still a great experience though.
She may have already slipped into the hive. If she has, and the bees accept her, you're in business. If not, or if she actually flew off and got lost, they will not have the means to make a replacement - no queen, no eggs, no replacement.
There are various options that can be used, they depend most on your available resources.
The best response to that situation is to just stand there with the lid off of the hive and wait until you either see her return (a queen flies quite differently than a worker) or it's been 10 minutes or so. The bees will keep nasanoving and she will smell that. She will orient on the tallest and widest thing around (most likely you) and probably return. Sometimes she will LAND on you, so you should pay attention. If you haven't seen her in ten minutes, odds are she did return and you just didn't see her.
If you only have one hive, there is a very good chance she will return to that one. If you have more than one, there is still a good chance she will return to that one as the queenless workers will be nasonoving to try to lead her back.
Keep us informed and GOOD LUCK! I hope she came back!!
C.Hayes, first and foremost, welcome to our forum. YOu will be happy that you have found this site to belong to. You will have mountains of questions, and all questions are good questions and will get an answer, never consider a question dumb. Welcome, welcome.
That is a bummer about the queen plug falling inside like that. Now you must wait and see. Check in a few days for eggs in that colony. You should see eggs within a few days. If you don't see any eggs, then that does definitely mean that the queen was lost. But there is a good chance too that the queen may have slipped into the colony when you didn't see. That would be my hopes for your situation anyways.
The bees will not follow the queen, they probably didn't even know that she flew away. BUT....in a very short time they would realize that they are queenless (if she did not go in the hive). They will want to rear a new queen, but with no eggs in that colony, it will not make it unless they get a queen or a frame of eggs to raise a new queen.
I honestly think your first step is to look for eggs in a few days. Then you can make an informed decision. I don't have any understanding of what top bar hives are. Well, I kinda do, I should rephrase that. If the bees were in regular boxes I would say combine the two colonies, one on top of the other, but because I don't keep top bar hives, I don't know if you can do this type of combine.
Others will pitch in to give you some more sound advice, just wait. IN the meantime, again, welcome to our forum. AND....have the best and most wonderful day, Cindi
If there is drawn comb for her to lay in then I would check for eggs in a few days like cindy said.
as back up, start finding out where to get an emergency queen if needed, or frames of brood and eggs from a local beek if you only have one hive.
Thanks for the advice and the welcome!
I went back to check on them and hive one seems to have slightly more bees around the front and flying around the entrance. I removed a few bars and looked in to see if they still had syrup in the baggie,and it was empty. Would it be too disruptive to again open it to replace the baggie? I also put a pollen pattie on each bottom.
Also, the bees are more in a swarm on the upper middle side.
In the 1st hive that still has the queen, the bees are more spread along the sides and bottom.
The top bars are frameless, so I'm not sure if I will be able to check for eggs though.
I would keep them fed for a while. The queen is either back or not, putting the feeder in won't hurt or help that.