Two queens in same hive

[dulley]

I have a new hive started on new wax/wood foundation on April 16.  I had the County Bee Inspector check it today because I had not seen anything (no eggs, worker larvae or capped brood), only tall capped drone cells for the past two week.  The drone capped brood appeared to be laid in worker-sized cells because they were very tall.  It was not a dense pattern of drone brood, but there were perhaps 10 or 20 in groups.  Before that, everything was going great with lots of brood.  We had assumed the hive had swarmed and, not knowingly, I had remove some queen cells - I thought.  I ordered a new queen (unfortunately not marked) and installed her 9 days ago.

When the Bee Inspector opened the hive today, we found two queens in there on adjacent frames in the lower brood chamber.  There were a lot of very young larvae in the cells in a very nice pattern.  Both queens seemed to be laying and were followed around by workers.  We could not tell if the larvae were drone or fertilized workers at this point.

The Bee Inspector thinks perhaps my hive did not swarm, but the original queen who came with the package in April is not infertile and is laying drones. If this is the case, we do not know why she or the workers did not kill the new queen I installed 9 days ago.  He also thought perhaps they did swarm and a new queen hatched about the same time I installed the new queen.

What should I do at this point?  Should I try to find both queens again, kill them and start with another new queen.  Should I just wait and see what the new larvae turn into in about a week before doing anything else?  Should I just do nothing and hope the fertile queen, if only one is fertile, kills the other one?  Can a hive ever have two fertile laying queens as mine may have?

Thanks,

Jim Dulley

[Keith13]

I believe I read somewhere mother and daughter might coexist in a hive for a small time. someone else will answer with a lot more experience

Keith

[Brian D. Bray]

Mother/daughter 2 queen hives are more frequently found in a supercedure situation.  The 2 queens may co-exist until fall when the least functioning will meet the same fate as the drones.
Another 2 queen situation can be with a failing queen (ie drone layer) and her replacement (either supercedure or introduced) with the same results.  In the case of a failing queen co-existing with a introduced replacement a problem may be that the drone layer is kept alive to produce an abundance of drones, then killed, and the other queen is then superceded or swarms.

If the introduced queen wasn't marked, I would split the hive placing one of your queens in each split to determine the drone layer then drop her in alcohol (swarm lure later) and recombine the hives or put a frame of brood from the good queen into that hive so a replacement can be made.  Your call.

[Michael Bush]

My guess is the bees will sort it out shortly.  They know which is which.

[Michael Bush]

If you really want to sort it out FOR them, try a split with each queen.  The one with worker brood, you keep, the one with drone brood, you pinch and recombine.