I cut out a fair size colony 16 days ago and filled two mediums with the cutout brood, pollen etc. Left it at the site for 3 days and the bees happily took up residence, then they were moved to their permanent home.
As I didn't locate the queen I figured she was hiding and would eventually make an appearance or the colony would make a new one.
The question is, how long do I need to wait before checking the hive for the queen or new queen cells. I don't want to disturb the hive unnecessarily and set back any progress, but I'm dying to know what's happening inside :cool:
If they were in their new home for 16+3 days, you should be able to see evidence of a good queen by finding her eggs, larva or even capped brood. Open queen cells at the bottom of the frames are common, capped queen cells, they look like peanut shells, are signs that the present queen is not well and about to be replaced. -Mike
It's 16 days in total, but I still don't know if I captured the queen.
If you have capped worker cells, or worker larva, then you got her.
But what's a reasonable time to wait from the day of cutting the colony out to opening the hive and checking?
I would say it would be a similar time frame that you have when installing a nuc. In your case, I think it would be alright to check of them a week to ten days after you moved them to their new home. That would give them plenty of time to do repairs to the comb and time to completely reorient to the new location. That is just my guess since I have never done a cutout and been in your situation.
IMO, folks are too afraid to "set back" the colony. You need to get into those bees to make sure everything is OK. During this time of year when it is warm, even at night, and if the bees are busy during the day collecting stores, don't fear messing them up. I find that during the middle of the day when the girls are busy and happy, I can use a minimal amount of smoke to peak in without getting anyone upset. When I do a cutout, if I'm not sure the queen, I will go back in the next day to look for her. If I don't see her, I will go back in a couple of days and look for eggs. If I see eggs, I got her. And especially during this time of year, do not cutout honey comb and put it in with them. And do put in a small hive beetle trap. Go have fun with those girls.
I check a cutout after 4 to 7 days. Eggs, I got her. Queen cells, I missed her, but all is well. They will have a queen.
No eggs, no cells, get a queen or supply eggs for making one, or combine with another hive.
I could not hold back my curiosity any longer and had a look this morning.
Most of the cutout comb has been attached to the frames and they are busily chewing through the elastic bands. No eggs or larvae but a few new queen cells and some uncapped honey :cool:
It's been 16 days, and you are seeing queen cells. Are the queen cells capped or open? How many? Is there capped worker brood? If you did not get the queen 20 days ago, they would have had to raise a new queen from the brood in the comb you moved. Let's say they raised an egg after it hatched, which was laid the day you did the cut out. The egg was laid around July 1. Hatches in three days. Is capped on July 8th?? Emerges on July 16th. Gets mated and begins to lay Somewhere around July 25th-ish.
Most likely scenario...You did not get the queen. They raised a new queen from young brood in the cutout. That new queen hatched and is getting mated now. They have already torn down the cell she hatched from. Give her another week to begin laying.
You are seeing "new" queen cells? How do you know they are new? Could they have held queens which have already been killed by the new queen when she hatched? Do any of them look like a bee emerged from the end? Do any of them have holes chewed in the side of them?
When I put the cutout sections of comb in the frames there were no queen cells, so these are new and they are all still capped.
I'll give it another look next weekend and see if I have a queen or eggs :wink:
According to your posts, you did the cutout on July 2nd. Look at Michael Bush's very helpful website, for Bee Math. Unless I am missing something (which is quite possible), there will be 16 days from the time that an egg is laid until the day a queen emerges. In your July 2nd cutout, there were eggs present. If you failed to get the queen, then these eggs and young larvae became the only viable way to requeen. This means that the very latest that your new queen could have emerged would be July 17th. If you are seeing queen cells on July 21st, it is likely that you did get the queen in the cutout. She was damaged but continued to lay for a few more days before her death. Then again, you see no other brood...I think you didn't get the queen. Those cells are probably not viable. Look closely to make sure that the side or back of the cell hasn't been torn out. I wouldn't fret though. Within a few days that new queen will start laying if she made it back from her mating flights.
Michael mentions that during hot weather it'll probably be sooner. I pm'd him the other day and mentioned that I made that observation recently as well. I probably wouldn't have even noticed it if it wasn't for his bee math page. I had dates on all the events leading up to the laying.
neilthecop, have you been back in the hive? Do you have a laying queen?