Hi, I Jim, I have been beeking for 1 year now. I have had my members name, Sawdstmakr, since the early days of AOL, My son worked for AOL here in Jacksonville FL. I used this name because I do a lot of wood working. Now-a-days I build all of my bee equipment.
I had 2 hives last year and one of them lost the queen in January so I added it to the other hive. 2 weeks ago I could not find any sign of a queen in that hive. It did not act like a queenless hive but I could not find any eggs or larva. I was waiting for 3 queens from my mentor, that were expected in about that time but it didn't happen. Last week I was able to get a queen from him that was was in a 2 frame nuke that was not laying very many eggs. I took it feeling it was better than no queen. I decided to build a screen seperator just incase there was a queen. Yesterday I opened up the hive with 2 hive bases ready just in case. Not only was the new queen laying nicely but the other queen was also still in there with lots of eggs and larva. I kept the new queen in her hive and split the other hive. both of these hives deep brood boxes, were full of bees. I put the new queen where the old box was. I put palm frans in front of the other boxes. The returning bees went into the new Queen box. One of the other 2 boxes had a lot of returning traffick the rest of the night the other did not have so much. I suspect the one with the heaver traffic probably had the old queen.
Well that is my first post to this site. Let me know what you think, right or wrong.
Thanks.
Jim.
Welcome to the forum. Sounds like you got your hives figured out now.
Welcome, Stick around, there's lots of us wood butcher here :-D
Scott
Welcome to the site!
Welcome to the forum Sawdstmakr it sounds like you're ahead of many of us in knowing how to handle your bees.
Tim