a few weeks ago i checked my hive and saw no brood or eggs. i looked for a queen and found none. i decided to get a replacement queen and installed her in the cage to make sure things were cool. i left the cage in for 3 days and then removed the cork to expose the sugar. i placed the cage in the center of the hive and left them be until today.
so i get in today and to my shock i find the queen dead in the cage, no attendant bees, and no sugar. i also found some capped brood, not much, but some. i found no eggs.
i have no idea what is going on in there, but i think i'm just going to leave them alone this season. i have a nuc on order and will just put my effort into getting them to produce honey this season. i might get a few pounds, not the 70 i was hoping for :(
Is that capped brood worker or drone brood? This answer might answer your question. If its drone you likely have laying workers, if its worker brood you have a queen but possibly a poor one. Have your bee number dwindled seriously. If not something must be going right.
Quote from: asciibaron on May 04, 2010, 08:40:26 PM
a few weeks ago i checked my hive and saw no brood or eggs. i looked for a queen and found none.
Asciibaron, I'm off topic here but I want to ask about your avatar. Is that from Badger and Blade by any chance? It would be interesting if I met the same person on two unrelated ??? forums. :-D
Quote from: bee-nuts on May 04, 2010, 11:09:28 PM
Is that capped brood worker or drone brood? This answer might answer your question. If its drone you likely have laying workers, if its worker brood you have a queen but possibly a poor one. Have your bee number dwindled seriously. If not something must be going right.
went back and looked at the brood -it's all drone. so much for that hive. any suggestions?
the simple way to take care of it is to walk that hive away from the others and empty all the bees from it. they will fly back, and not finding their home, will join other hives. there are ways to introduce queens, introduce brood, etc. you may want to do a search on here for laying worker hives if you are interested in trying those other methods.
if you empty this hive, make sure not to put the old box back. you don't want to give them that home.
by the sounds of your original post you dont have other colonies yet so I dont think you want to shake them out at this point. I would try sticking in a frame with fresh laid eggs and larve to see if they dont try and make a new queen. If you dont have a friend that can give you one I would call whoever runs your local bee club and see if they can or know someone who might sell you a frame of brood. If that did not work I would call a local commercail beek and see if they would sell me one. Or you can just let them fizzle out if its not worh the trouble to ya. Once you have more than one hive you wont have to call someone for a frame of brood. If you are getting that nuc soon you can take some eggs from that one.
Do the search here as kathy says and on the web for laying workers
good luck
look on MBs site about installing a queen in a laying worker hive.
my plan is to take a frame from the nuc and see if that gets things going in the right direction.
There are few solutions as universal in their application and their success than adding a frame of open brood every week for three weeks. It is a virtual panecea for any queen issues. It gives the bees the pheromones to suppress laying workers. It gives them more workers coming in during a period where there is no laying queen. It does not interfere if there is a virgin queen. It gives them the resources to rear a queen. It is virtually foolproof and does not require finding a queen or seeing eggs. If you have any issue with queenrightness, no brood, worried that there is no queen, this is the simple solution that reuires no worrying, no waiting, no hoping. You just give them what they need to resolve the situation. If you have any doubts about the queenrightness of a hive, give them some open brood and sleep well. Repeat once a week for two more weeks if you still aren't sure. By then things will be fine.
On adding a frame of brood to a hive - do you add it with the bees that are clinging to the frame or shake them all off first? Really basic question, I know, but it is amazing what the books leave out sometimes.... :-D
JC
If there is no queen at all then I leave the nurse bees on the frame as extra workers till the new queen starts laying.
You can leave them on or shake them off. If the hive you're trying to save is short on bees, it makes sense to leave them on.