So... I'm going into my 2nd year of beekeeping. What my "girls" don't teach me, the beekeepers in this forum do, and I need some insight! I'm afraid my newbeekiness has made a mess of things! Ok, from the beginning. On March 30, I started two new hives with bee packages. 3 days later, I checked to see if the queens had been released. In hive #1, she was released. Hive #2, she was not. Now it kills me to have to admit this, but.....I sprayed her cage with sugar water to knock off the bees on her cage so that I could loosen her candy to free her. And she crawled around a little bit, slower and slower; then curled up into a little ball and didn't move anymore. At all. Oh, I know you guys are going to abuse me for that, but I deserve it. :-\ I made provisions to get another queen ASAP (maybe by mid May). Tonight, I opened up my other hives to see if any other queens had borod that I could swap into the queenless hive, in hopes they'd foster a new queen until the purchased one arrives. To my surprise, hive #2 has eggs and larvae! It is going strong, much better than hive #1. Hive #1 does not have any eggs or larvae yet that I could see, and very little drawn comb. Any possibility that either the queen from hive #1 went to hive #2; or did the original queen from hive #2 not drown a horrible sugar water death? Ugh. Also, one other thing. There were cockroaches under the top covers of all of my hives. WTH? I will puke. Is this normal? Why aren't the bees killing them? How do I get rid of them and where did they come from? I did not know that this could even be an issue; I never saw one last year!
German brown Roaches are common in a hive, especially on top of inner covers etc. Ignore them if you can :-D
You probably just thought you killed the queen, did you remove her from the cage or did the bees finish chewing the candy out?
I count eleven days on the other queen---- give her time to settle in.
Another possibility: Hive 2 had two queens to start with. One was laying eggs while the second one was stuck in her cage. Maybe they did not release her because she was not welcome. You did the hive a favor by killing her.
Yeah and don't forget to cancel your new queen order. Since you have few hives, you can just give a queenless a frame of young brood, eggs and young larvae. For a queen that may come a month later, it is almost the same, but will cost you less.
Ditto what organicfarmer said.
Once the laying hive has a few frames of eggs you can take one of them and put it in the queenless hive. The queenless hive will make queen cells out of the youngest eggs. A way to make sur the eggs are fresh enough is to use the frame you find the queen on. Just help her on to a different frame before placing it into the queenless hive first.
If the bees have too much space to defend they may not be able to keep pests out of the hive. How many boxes do you have on these new hives? A new package should usually only start off with a single brood box. Even then critters can get into a new hive.
You guys are right they will make a new queen but will they make a good laying healthy emergency queen ??? It takes alot of bees to make a good healthy queen that will feed the queen constantly and maintain the right temperatures will incubating. Chris