First some background, I installed two packages Saturday next to my two overwintered hives, everything went as planned. The only thing was I think that some of the flying bees drifted to one hive making it a little stronger than the other. I'm not worried about that. On Monday morning I looked out my kitchen window at my hives and noticed a small clump of bees on the front of one of my hives near the top. I decided to investigate. When I got near I noticed that it wasn't just a group of foragers but to my surprise there was a circle of bees with a queen in the middle. This was on one of the newly installed hives. So my first thought was they released the queen and she decided to go for a walk. I grabbed a nuc that I had in the shed and put the queen and about 20-30 surrounding bees in it so I could check out the hive. I opened the hive to check if they released the queen yet. When I looked at the queen cage, the queen was alive and well. They were very close to releasing her so I pulled the screen and watched her walk down between the frames. While I was there I checked on the other hive installed. That queen had already been released and the bees were just going about their business. So after all this, my question is what would you do with the queen(virgin?) and the few bees that surrounded her? I would appreciate any and all opinions. This is more for learning what to do next time since the weather won't allow me to do much. It started raining Monday and its going to be too cold to do anything til later this week. Thanks.
Chris
I would pull a frame of sealed brood, and a shake of bees, from the over wintered hives, and put her in a nuc with them. I'd also put a feeder on it. If the over wintered hives can spare a frame of stores, I'd put that also in the nuc instead of feed. I'd get my umbrella out and do it pronto.
It could be possible you had a second loose Queen in one of the packages. Give it a frame of capped brood from one of your overwintered hives. Shake the bees off first. d2
Quote from: don2 on April 15, 2014, 12:50:35 PM
It could be possible you had a second loose Queen in one of the packages. Give it a frame of capped brood from one of your overwintered hives. Shake the bees off first. d2
Why would you need to shake the bees off?
You could take a frame from two hives, bees and all put in a nuc with the queen and that few bees and have a good start if the queen is ok. And like has already been said I would go ahead and do it. get somebody to hold an umbrella.
What I wonder is if you had a accidental queen right package with a 2nd caged queen in it they would have been biting at her. They also most likely would not have tried to release her and when you pulled the screen they would have balled her.
All I can do is agree with everyone else and thank the heavens for the gift of a free colony. :lol:
don2, he said there were only 20-30 bees with her. They need the bees on the frame to make it. I would do 2 or 3 frames with bees. Indiana isn't summer yet.
10/4,d2
Ray read my mind. Ditto, ditto and ditto.
Old Blue
Where sealing the deal with a frame of brood is standard operating procedure. In.............
Kali-bone-ya