Queen Without An Entourage?

[mtnb]

About 3 weeks ago I did a split with a purchased queen. She had ?helpers? when I introduced her. Yesterday I looked, and saw her, but she had no entourage. She was also in the process of laying eggs. It seems like she?s still learning how. ? They did have sealed brood and larvae in all stages (properly layed), and when I saw her, she was looking for a cell to lay in, couldn?t really find one before the egg emerged, and it was layed on top of the wax between two cells. During this whole time of her looking, she didn?t have any workers follow her around. They all just kinda looked at her as she passed by. A few did get more excited I guess and faced her, but no real excitement or surrounding. What does this mean? Should I be concerned?

[BeeMaster2]

It means you have a newly mated queen. Give her 2 weeks. You could very well have her mother in the hive also. Was she marked?
Jim Altmiller

[TheHoneyPump]

What Jim said.  In all likely hood that queen you are looking at is not the queen you purchased.  She is most likely the supercedure/emergency queen that the bees started raising the day you made the split.  She is now mated and laying.
Look closer in the hive, it is unlikely but for a short period you may actually spot two queens in the hive.
The other possibility is the queen you were looking at is the bought queen. She has no entourage because the bees have another queen on the go elsewhere in the hive and this one they are ignoring. Eventually she will starve off and die, or die in the upcoming battle royale.

Do not panic. Too late to do anything about it now anyways. Nature will take its course in due time.  All is fine.

[Ben Framed]

What Jim said.  In all likely hood that queen you are looking at is not the queen you purchased.  She is most likely the supercedure/emergency queen that the bees started raising the day you made the split.  She is now mated and laying.
Look closer in the hive, it is unlikely but for a short period you may actually spot two queens in the hive.
The other possibility is the queen you were looking at is the bought queen. She has no entourage because the bees have another queen on the go elsewhere in the hive and this one they are ignoring. Eventually she will starve off and die, or die in the upcoming battle royale.

Do not panic. Too late to do anything about it now anyways. Nature will take its course in due time.  All is fine.

A question Mr Claude, could he possibly pull her, place her in a queen clip or cage, introducing her to another brand new split of a couple frames of capped brood, food and nurse bees, perhaps in a two or three frame mating nuc? That is of course, both queens are still there and alive?

[Troutdog]

I never saw mated queens fight. I think it's more a myth.
The one with the stronger pheromones gets the food.
Queens feeding themselves is not uncommon especially in juvenile colonies.

Run with the 2 if you can and brood up faster if the hive has resources.

I've taken mated qs and tried to get them to fight never happened.
The workers do all that if at all.
Might be right they stop feeding her and she just leaves.
Soooo much we dont know...keeps it fun.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

[mtnb]

Thanks for the replies guys. I think what you suggest makes sense, except that I don?t think that?s the case. I?ll give a little more background. I bought a package and had installed it into this hive. After a couple of weeks I noticed that bees were coming and going from a different hive which was empty just waiting to be cleaned after the winter. So it turned out that the queen and much of the colony left this particular hive and moved into another bigger hive. The queen is definitely in there, and laying well. That left the first hive queenless. I never saw any eggs or even brood in there. Just honey. The queen I introduced was definitely one and the same for she was and is marked. One thing I remember I did find curious though is, when I first introduced her, they really weren?t super excited that she was there then either. But she really has got to be the only queen. I think. But who knows I guess lol Maybe they?ll like her better after she gets the laying down and her pheromones get stronger?