Introduced queens into two medium sized nucs 10 days ago and just spotted both hives bringing in pollen. Is this a good sign that both queens have been accepted and are laying? Don't want to open up the hives yet so am stuck with just observing the entrance activity of the hives.
Next question is how much longer should I wait before opening the hives to check for brood?
Thanks, Ed
Bringing in pollen is a good sign that some kind of brood rearing is going on. Checking at ten days might be wise. If the nucs were started with open brood, any queen cells that may have been started should be capped ( & dealt with right away).
Did you direct release the new queens? If so you should be seeing a growing patch of capped brood from your new queens at ten days.
A bit more info on how you made up your nucs & released you queens would help direct any advice.
*edited for clarity
The nucs were split off from a really large hive that needed to be broken down to prevent swarming and was getting hot. I let the nucs sit for about 2-3 days before introducing the queens which were still in thier cages. Each nuc had about 2-3 frames of brood along with honey and some bee bread. After 3 days I went back into the hives and saw that there were bees on the queen cages which were taking care of the queens. I released the queens from thier cages and they went down into the hives with no balling or aggression from the bees. It's been ten days since I released the queens and this was the first day I''ve seen pollen coming into the hives.
Wouldn't the new queens kill or destroy any capped queen cells that might of been made by the bees using the brood I started the nucs with? Just wondering and don't want to disturb the new hives any more than needed by looking for queen cells.
It's more likely the bees would kill the strange queen, since they consider queen cells as being queenright. I would be checking them today, before the cells emerge. You will have a much harder time looking for a virgin queen.
>Is this a good sign that both queens have been accepted and are laying?
It means nothing. Queenless hives and especially laying worker hives will haul in pollen like there is no tomorrow.
!
If you want to know if they are queenright and raising brood you will have to look in the brood nest.