Hello All,
So I have a queen question for you all. Of my two hives, one is going gangbusters, and the other – while heavily populated with bees – is queenless. Last week when I opened both hives, the queenless hive had quite a bit of open larva at various stages of growth, but I found no eggs and no queen. This weekend all the larva is capped and there are still no new eggs. I didn't rip out every frame, but I didn't see any emergency queen cells on the ones I did check. Today I took two frames of eggs/larva/capped brood from the strong hive and put them into the queenless hive (thank you Michael Bush for that tip...). However, I'm a bit concerned that since they didn't form any emergency cells over the course of the last week with their existing larva, they might not take advantage of the new eggs/larva I'm giving them.
My other hive is building out fast - I use deep bodies, and last weekend I added a 3rd deep body to that hive; As of today they have made significant progress drawing the new box out. I'm a bit concerned they may try to swarm, which got me wondering...if it does make a swarm cell, can I put the old queen and some frames of brood into the other queenless hive? Or is this a recipe for disaster?
I've been looking around for available queens, but no one seems to have them right now. Just wondering what other options I have if they don't fix the problem themselves....
See what happens with the frame of eggs. They should start making cells if queenless. If they don't you may have a virgin queen or one not laying yet. What is the possibility it swarmed and you were unaware of it? Are they cleaning cells? Cleaning and polishing cells is sometimes a sign of having a queen but waiting for here to start laying. The frame of eggs is the best test. You put them in today 3- 4 days you should know.
Did you check for swarm cells? The Queen stops laying several days prier to swarming. Not seeing eggs does not necessarily mean there is no queen. d2
It's possible they swarmed and I didn't catch it. I checked the bottom of one box for swarm cells and saw none, but now that I think about it, I did not check the bottom of the other box. I will go back in a few days and take a look to see.