Hello,
I am a first time beekeeper in Milwaukee, WI. I installed a 3lb package into new equipment on April 21st and released the Carniolan queen 5 days later. The first inspection 7 days after release looked fine, saw an orderly arrangement of eggs and comb being built on the wax foundation. In today's inspection 10 days later I found this:
transitrecording.com/photos/5-13-inspection-IMG_7082.jpg
transitrecording.com/photos/5-13-inspection-IMG_7085.jpg
transitrecording.com/photos/5-13-inspection-IMG_7088.jpg
transitrecording.com/photos/5-13-inspection-IMG_7093.jpg
transitrecording.com/photos/5-13-inspection-IMG_7098.jpg
You'll find the queen in the last photo (center). All I have to go on is what I've read and seen online/in books, but is she laying only drones? It all says "squish her and buy a new queen tomorrow" to me, but I would really appreciate some trained eyes on this. I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for, but all the brood cells seem enlarged and not very orderly. The bees seemed pretty calm, and have been foraging daily in all sorts of cool weather, bringing in lots of pollen.
Thanks for your help!
-Alex
Hi Alex,
You have to be on the forum for a short while before they will let you post photos - it's for the good of all and keeps people from abusing the privilege, but I know it will be frustrating for you that we can't see what you posted yet.
It's natural for queens to lay drones in addition to workers. If some of your brood has flat cappings that are brownish, then you have workers. Drone brood is capped in a hump that can be about 1/4 inch above the surface of the brood, making lots of little drone warty looking caps. They do need to make some drones, so don't worry. If that is all she is laying and there's no flat capped brood anywhere, you might want to be concerned.
Richard Taylor wrote:
"There are a few rules of thumb that are useful guides. One is that when you are confronted with some problem in the apiary and you do not know what to do, then do nothing. Matters are seldom made worse by doing nothing and are often made much worse by inept intervention." --The How-To-Do-It book of Beekeeping, Richard Taylor
I think when in doubt, don't.
Linda T in Atlanta
If you'll go look at the third photo in this post, you can see on the frame both capped worker (flat) and capped drone (raised) brood:
http://beekeeperlinda.blogspot.com/2011/03/blue-heron-first-real-inspection-2011.html (http://beekeeperlinda.blogspot.com/2011/03/blue-heron-first-real-inspection-2011.html)
The frame looks a little chaotic, but I wouldn't have done anything except look at it.
Linda T in Atlanta
Thanks for the quick replies! I understand the necessity for the url/photo posting rule. In this case only a photo can tell the story, as I dont know what I'm looking at. So anyone who would like to see can add the http prefix to transitrecording.com/photos/ Sorry if I'm violating the rules here.
I think I see some flat capped brood in the last photo, but during inspection on 6 frames I found only raised.
Alex,
Yes, that is all drone brood.
Just be glad there is a queen to pinch. This problem is easily corrected with a new queen.
Usually, this is the result of a worker laying colony. Far worse situation.
Pinch the queen and get a new one installed.
Thanks BjornBee. I've contacted my supplier, hoping they can ship me a new queen this week.
Should I pinch her right away? I guess the question is how long should/can the colony go queenless before introducing a new queen? Also, since this is a new colony on new equipment that missed the early Spring nectar flow because it came a month early here, should I remove the drone cells?
This forum is a great resource, thanks everyone for sharing your advice.
Its a somewhat increasing problem with packages, They may be mated but the sperm may have died along the way which is something were finding out. We had about a 4% drone layers. just pinch her now and get one asap. It happens in mass producing a several thousand queens.
>Should I pinch her right away?
I wouldn't go looking for her until you have a queen in hand, but considering she might be hard to find, I probably would if I saw her to save finding her later. It's not like she's doing much good.
>I guess the question is how long should/can the colony go queenless before introducing a new queen?
My preferred time is overnight. I prefer nothing over 24 hours but that's mostly because they may start queen cells. As it is they might start some from the drone brood but they know it's drone brood and won't hesitate to tear them down and build new ones if they have fertile eggs or just tear them down if they have a fertile queen.
I went looking for her yesterday and it seems they already took her down (looked everywhere, also think I heard the "queenless hum"). There are definitely some queen cups present, but I still identified only drone brood. I also pulled and froze two drone-heavy frames while I was in there.
A replacement should be here today or tomorrow. There's a puzzle that I'm still trying to figure out: I ordered a Carniolan queen, but I've had two people (supplier included) tell me the picture shows a Cordovan Italian. My first thought was, "dang, she got big fast!" but at this point I'm pretty positive that the queen in the picture is not the queen I introduced. You can also see a damaged right wing, which all has me thinking my package came with an Italian queen and a battle of European royalty ensued. Puzzles like this are part of what drew me to beekeeping, so any insights would be most welcome.