I installed 5-3#ers Sat. night. I did the usual shaking as many bees as I could on the queen cage and in the hive. I then placed the package in front for the remainder to walk in. All went well except #2 had alot of bees that just clustered on the side of the hive stand. I took a lid from one of the packages and used it like a dust pan sweeping and pour bees on the landing strip. I had my reducers in place but not pushed in as far as it could go. This left a small 4" crack at the other end from the small opening. On my first scoop a second queen shot out of the bees scrambled the length of the reducer before finding the small enterance and going in. I now have two queens, one loose and one caged in the same hive. This package was also way more agressive
So are you saying you got 5 packages and 6 queens by accident, or one of the 5 queens entered one of your set ups?
...JP
I got five packages and one had two queens, one caged and one loose. Now there both in the same hive.
Danno, there will be only one queen, they will duke it out.....too bad that that didn't happen where you had a colony to split, you would have had an extra queen for that split. Beautiful and wonderful day, Cindi
Yes i know only one will survive. I'm just hoping it the young marked one
I wish the multiple queens in one of my hives would fight it out. I had a whole host of queen cells (high and low) a couple of weeks ago. It was a crap shoot whether they would swarm or supersede. Well they swarmed. And again. And again. And again. 4 swarms captured from the same hive in less than a week. An amazing site. I have to assume that each of the last three queens are newly emerged. Instead of mortal combat, when a new queen emerges, the "old" queen (newly emerged herself) just swarms. I have caught them all so far. And hopefully with a little luck they will have success in mating and return to lay. The interesting thing about the mother hive is that there are at least 6 more queen cells remain. I am keeping my swarm boxes at the ready for tomorrow's swarms.
Laying queens usually don't duke it out. Virgins do. Laying queens usually get chosen by the workers. The workers almost always choose younger queens as they make more of the right pheromones.