Hi,
I seem to be in a loop of loosing queens. I have two hives that I have replaced the queen in three times this year. Hive has plenty of bees, has plenty of brood, pollen, and fair amount of honey. Hives looked good when checked two weeks ago. When checked this past weekend, found two hives queenless and no eggs. Only two thirds developed brood.
One colony had no queen cells built, but the other had capped queen cells on three of the frames. I took one of these frames and put it in the other queenless colony. Wondering why I keep going queenless. On one of these colonies, they requeened already as of July, the other I keep buying queens and putting them in the colony inside queen cages, with candy for slow release.
Seems to be a cycle I'm in, I get them going in right direction, think they are building up colony, then six or eight weeks later, find them queenless again.
They did not swarm, have fair amount of bees built up in the colony, with room for expansion.
Any thoughts on how to get out of this loop.
I check on my hives every two weeks, I'm make sure I am not harming queen when checking frames.
Any thoughts on what could be going on?
Thanks
David
All queens coming from the same source? Sounds like possible supercedure.
Are you constantly feeding? If so then they may have backfilled the brood nest. No matter how many empty frames they have if the drawn comb is filled then they will swarm. To them the flow is still on.
I had a problem last year with queens. I found several crawling around in front of the hive. Some were package bees, some were supercedures, and so on.
Along the lines of SC, are you sure your queens haven't just stopped laying. If you are not feeding, did the food source dry up? She may be doing the right thing for your area. Check with local beeks. If you are not in a club, search for one and join.
Jim
Hi,
I've tried two different suppliers for the queens. One I found queenless in around fourth of July. When I went back with a bought queen, found they had made a queen and she was running around the frame. She was a laying machine, until this weekend when not one eggs and about two week old brood. She was unmarked, but the other was marked . I'm pretty sure they are both queenless (I checked like three times as did my uncle).
Not sure of the stopped laying part (how often do they do that). One was Italian, and other was Carnolian.
When they do a supersedure, do they immediately kill the queen, or do they wait to get a couple of queen cells going before killing the queen?
As far as feeding, I just started feeding two weeks ago. They are not honeybound, and have empty cells ready. I am not going to harvest any honey this year, leaving honey for them for the winter.
thanks
David
When a colony supersedes a queen, the new virgin will mate and begin to lay before the old queen goes. The old and new will often be together for weeks before the old queen disappears.
"Not sure of the stopped laying part (how often do they do that). One was Italian, and other was Carnolian"
They do it when ever there is no food coming in. It takes a lot of pollen and nectar to feed brood.
As many as 20% of hives during warm months will have a mother and daughter laying side by side.
Jim
I got me some jeweler visors, they work great finding the eggs. Look for larva of all sizes, and look at the thorax of the bees. You're looking for hair. If all you see is black bald thorax's and no larva then the hive is surviving on borrowed time. Some hair and a lot of hair means not so old and new bees. eggs means you just can't find the queen. Happens to the best of us. The different size larva would represent different hatching times.
I've read and saw on you tube where beeks talked about certain hives. It didn't matter what they done nothing worked. Just for conversation sake describe the location of the failing hive compared to the other one. That may or may not play a part.