I made a small split from one of my big hives a couple frames of brood and a honey frame into a nuc and put a queen that I bought into it in a push in cage on April 25. I let her out on April 29 I looked today and she is on the frames but I see very little laying going on. Is this normal for a new queen or should she be doing better.
If she was an "untested" queen she is probably a virgin queen and could take up to 28 days to start laying (books say 21 but we know of some taking 28 - particularly if raining for several days. "tested" queens are up to 3 months old and have been proven to have a good laying pattern before sale.
Smoky,
It has only been 11 days.
A
Does she walk on the bees or are they walking on her. Both signs of a virgin. She may bee just getting started.
Jim
She is on a frame by herself she was not on the frame with the other bees it was the honey frame that she was on. I do not see my other queens on honey frames like that I thought it strange but queens do go everywhere
Did she have attendants?
Queens do not usually go on capped honey frames but they will occasionally will. I just saw my newly mated queen in the top right corner of my observation hive. That corner of that frame is all capped honey. She did not have any attendants around her and she is a laying machine. In less than 3 weeks I have 7 frames of capped brood and she is now laying on a completely empty drawn frame in the bottom of the hive with only a few bees covering it. This afternoon I will be checking to see if the egg police have removed them because I do not think there are enough bees to cover these eggs. I am expecting brood to start hatching any day now to help keep enough bees for her to finish out the single empty frame in the bottom of the hive. After that I expect this hive to explode with bees as the rest hatch out.
Jim
A queen will usually be on brood comb. But...I was in a commercial yard making dozens of splits a while back and I found queens everywhere. Even on a division board feeder. And I wasn't really using any smoke either, so I wasn't running them anywhere. Crazy things.
If the queen isn't laying well yet, and was walking by herself on honey comb...I'd count the days and be ready to replace her. I had a supercedure this year where the new queen never started laying. She emerged within a day of another supercedure queen in the same yard. The other mated and began laying beautifully. This queen swelled like she was mated, but just never started laying. Hmmmmm.