I only have one hive and it is a weak one. Here are the basics. My first hive was italian and it was great... produced a lot of honey, but an animal got to it and it did not make it thru the winter.... so last year I moved in a new italian 3lb pack... I figured with all the honey left over from the previous hive the new hive would get a great start... but last year the new hive produced very little.... Here we are this year and its seems to be the same story.
so with only the one hive I do not have any other resources readily available to pull from. There is a bee shop about 30 minutes away and I thought about buying a new queen and re-queening... OR, another option was to get a new queen and an excluder. Install the new queen and separate from the old... so I would have a two queen hive.
From reading the posts in here I have learned about getting a new frame with brood. Not really an option unless the bee shop sells those.
A few questions come to mind... will the genetics of the new queen override the drones in my existing hive and produce a better hive, or do I just need better drones for my current queen. From what I know of genetics it is a crap shoot and it could go either way. The only way to be sure would be to get a brood frame with a queen cell from an existing good hive and install that.
It would greatly help to know your location. If you are down south then you have issues as ours should be full strength if you installed them last year. If in the far north they could be coming out of winter in bad shape.
Now, if you buy a queen she should be already mated and ideally tested in a nuc to verify well bred with a good laying pattern. Requeening is always an option if it is really a poor producing queen that is the root of your problems. Of course the same thing can be rectified by pinching your queen and letting the bees raise their own from existing brood, if you have any. This option though would further worsen the problem temporarily as there would be a break in brood rearing.
As far as genetics go I really wouldn't worry about it as virgin queens have a built in behavioral trait to fly low when exiting on their maiden flight to avoid drones from their own hive and even if she met up with one or two of her half brothers it shouldn't really matter as she will mate with multiple drones and the odds of a purely inbred queen from a natural mating flight is very low. Now of course genetics like all natural DNA crosses is a crap shoot but honeybees are amazingly resiliant creatures and it is almost guaranteed that a naturally mated queen will not be so genetically deficient that survival of the hive much less the species is put into jeopardy.
JMO, but I suspect there may be other underlying issues such as brood diseases (chalkbrood, insufficient bees to maintain warmth, etc), mites (varroa, tracheal), viruses, pesticides or some other issues that has dropped your numbers.
If you could give us some more info, please.
The hive is in the Seattle area surrounded by a lot of foliage. Maple trees, black berries, raspberries, straweberries, and a lot of blooming plants at the moment. Maybe this is the normfor behives, but this hive is just so opposite from my first year hive that produced so much honey. This new hive barely made it into the 3rd super last year. The first two are full size and 3 and 4 are the smaller honey collecting size. There is an excluder between 2 and 3. so far this year they have drawn out just a bit on one or two frames in super 3. Dont get me wrong they are flying around like crazy... today is sunny and 80 and they are going full tilt. Bees everywhere around the entrance... they have been like this for the last 5 weeks because we are having the best spring in years. This neighborhood is full of foliage and flowers in bloom and all kinds of food for them..... they just are not producing.
I can certainly pinch the queen, but wouldnt the new queen be just as weak coming from the same genes? or is this more of a "runt of the litter" kind of thing... the queen I have is just a bad one?
Look at the drones in your area for the queen you will raise for her offspring.
If you can buy a queen. It will save you a few weeks of brood development.
I would remove the excluder & gauge their progress then. Excluders are not natural & likely impeding their progress. If numbers are low you could buy a queenless package & do a combine.
...JP
A weak hive is not limited by what the queen can lay, they are limited by what the workers can care for. Another queen will not resolve that. A better queen MIGHT or might not resolve that they are weak depending on the cause.