No better way to title it. I recieved 7 queens the other day, I had made their reciepent hives queenless for 24ish hours before placing the new queens in the hives. I did check them for any E-queen cells and did not notice any. I was not able to leave the queenless longer because I had to go out of state and did not have any one around to work the bees for me.
The queens were placed the day I left and 4 days later when I returned 4 of the 7 hives were empty.
I am runnin 8 frame medium hives. These were fully functional hives when I removed their queens. After removing the old queens, I added 1 quart of 2:1 syrup and reduced the entrance down to one bee space. I an not sure what went wrong or how I fouled it up. Any thoughts?
I know that idealy they are suppose to be queenless for 48 hours but the time was not allowed to me and I do not think the ladies would have made it 7 days in their cages inside my house.
Did you release the queens in the hive after 24 hours or did you put the queens in the hive inside queen cages + candy cap?
Don't know what happened, but is robbing a possibility? It seems like the house bees are lost without a queen and don't try to defend the hive like they should when the queen is missing. That + syrup is a open call to robbers. I agree that 2:1 is less of a dinner bell than 1:1, but robbing might still be a culprit.
Was there open brood in these hives when you put the queen in? Bees are really reluctant to leave a hive with open brood.
I assume the hives were not overrun with pests? I guess there are always other possible explanations too like CCD, but I'm just trying to rule in/out the obvious scenarios. Sorry for your loss.
I guess robbing could have happened since I was not here to keep an eye on them. I have been very luck because I have only seen a few mites and beetles. There was capped brood, but not open since I did not want them to try and raise their own queen.
The way I understand your posts, you removed the queens from fully functional hives and 24 hours later there was no open brood. How could this be?
They were not completely free of uncapped brood, but I did try to keep it to a minimun, by removing the frames that were not mostly capped. Not sure if that helped or hurt my situtation
Why would you not want capped brood in your hive? :?
to try and keep them from raising a queen from their genetics and hope they would be more willing to accept the new one. Guess I showed them :?
Bees are much more apt to abscond when they have no open brood... and 24 hours is about perfect for adding a queen. In 48 they will start emergency cells. Were the queen cages empty? Were there dead bees around?
Yes sir the queen cages were empty. There were not any dead bees around,only a few recently emerged workers were inside. I have some old shingles on the ground under and in front of my hives so I can see what is going on and there were no little bee bodies around.