Help Needed

PhilK · February 19, 2016, 12:51:13 AM

G'day, I'd really appreciate some advice!

I posted a little while ago that one our hives (Hive B) swarmed. We captured and hived the swarm making it Hive C. We gave them a frame of honey and a frame of open brood of different ages. An inspection of hive B showed a decrease in bee numbers, but about 6 queen cells (all capped, one recently opened).

Today (7 days later) we did another inspection - Hive C (the swarm) was all but dead. No queen, no eggs, no young larvae. Small patch of capped brood. Lots of chalk brood. Very small amount of workers (nowhere near as many as the swarm was) still hanging around inside. Only one dead bee on the bottom board.
Hive B is bustling with bees again (I assume the swarm bees from C went back to B). They have plenty of pollen and honey, but not a single egg or larva seen across 10 deep frames. No queen sited. All queen cells gone.

We have another hive (A) that is quite strong, so we took C and gave it to A between their brood box and their super. They have a small amount of chalk brood so figured it'd be best to give them the doomed swarm hive. We also replaced their lid with a better ventilated one. Because B has no evidence of eggs or a queen, we took a frame from A that had eggs and placed it into B hoping they will raise a queen from it.

Have we done the right thing? Why would the swarm hive be missing a queen, did she just leave? How come Hive B had 6 queen cells and a week later they have none, and no queen - the only thing I can think of is that maybe we opened up while she was on a mating flight...

A bit confused now. Even the queen in A hasn't got a great brood pattern, so just thinking of requeening both hives. Thoughts?

iddee · February 19, 2016, 08:08:55 AM

7 days after capped queen cell, you have a virgin queen. Give her another week to 2 weeks to begin laying in hive B.

chux · February 19, 2016, 09:34:18 AM

How big was this swarm? Was it a secondary swarm or a primary swarm? If it was a smaller, secondary swarm, the queen would have been a virgin queen. After you hived them, she would have gone out to mate. It would take several days before she started laying. Based on your description of the colony after a week, it is likely that the queen didn't survive that mating flight. The swarm decided to head back to the parent colony.

PhilK · February 21, 2016, 08:00:42 AM

Thanks for the replies - I suspect it was an after swarm as the swarm wasn't very big. Makes sense that maybe she hasn't survived her flight.

Iddee - we couldn't see a queen anywhere in the hive. Is it possible that she was outside having her flight?

iddee · February 21, 2016, 08:53:45 AM

I have seen experienced beeks look for a new queen in a 3 frame nuc for 20 minutes and not find her. I think you just overlooked her. I know a state bee inspector that looked for 2 hours for a "yellow marked" queen in a hive and never found her. Sometimes they hide in the corner and off the frame, or just mix in with the workers where they are missed.

BeeMaster2 · February 21, 2016, 08:54:54 PM

New queens are a lot harder to find than mated queens. Bees craw over virgin queens and queens craw on top of the bees. Under calm conditions, I never see either case with mated queens. The bees respect a mated queen and get out of her way, usually with a royal court around her.
This makes finding virgin queens so hard to find. On top of that a virgin queen is smaller than a mated queen.
Jim

chux · February 23, 2016, 11:15:22 AM

Some ways to tell a virgin, or even newly mated, queen. 1) Her abdomen is not yet fully swollen, so she is smaller than a laying queen. 2) She usually moves around a lot faster than an older queen. 3) As she runs around the frame, a virgin's wings tend to appear to be in a more upright position. An older queen's wings seem to lay flatter along her back as she calmly walks along the frame.